9 ms·

Install Fests: What to Do about the Deal with the Devil

56 points by lelf 8y ago

scrumbledober 8y ago
I'm all for OSS, but reading things like this really make me think of the community as totally nuts. I don't have the time in my life to get this worked up over OSS, and I don't have the time to avoid the smallest paid software package. I guess I am glad that a community like this exists to push OSS forwards, but I wonder how much this pushes away more moderate people. Would the ecosystem be as easy for a moderate like me to enter were it not for these fringe envelope pushers? Would it be slightly harder to enter, but offset by the larger number of developers not alienated by the apparent gung-ho anti-establishment attitude? In the end I think it's a benefit but it does push me away.
- peterarmstrong 8y ago
  Speaking of OSS: essentially the whole reason that the term "Open Source Software" exists is because the Free Software Foundation often comes across like this. "Free Software" is the brand for people who think that modest proposals like this one are reasonable; Open Source is the brand for actually pragmatic people. The fact that you'll write "I'm all for OSS, but..." shows how successful this cultural branding effort has been...
- noir_lord 8y ago
  Nuts or not they fight the good fight on our behalf by acting as an anchor at the other end of the spectrum. Even if I’m not as ardent about it as a beneficiary of open source in all its forms I can understand the viewpoint of those who are. There is value in that I think.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - jolmg 8y ago
    > There is value in that I think. Yes, thinking does have value. :P > There is value in that, I think. Totally agree with your comment, though.
  - santoshalper 8y ago
    It's a tough call. I do see the logic in what you're saying, but when I read things like this, he seems more like PETA than anything else: actively harmful to his movement. Basically a walking, talking strawman.
  - a-nikolaev 8y ago
    Richard Stallman is important as a visionary. I think, his views may be really impractical short-term, but he is often spot-on long-term. Taking him seriously and listening to his opinion is worth the effort, I think.
    - laughinghan 8y ago
      Interesting. What are some examples of things he predicted in the past that were really impractical short-term, but turned out to be spot-on long-term?
      - a-nikolaev 8y ago
        I don't have specific examples off the top of my head. This is just the realization I had after reading and watching his talks and articles. You can google "stallman was right" and "stallman was wrong", and see where he got it right or not. I did some search, and this discussion seems helpful and exactly on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3417033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3417033
      - greymeister 8y ago
        I would say the modern state of surveillance capitalism is in a large part what rms warned about with proprietary systems being used against the user.
- undecisive 8y ago
  No, not the community. Richard Stallman. In any community - social, religious, utility - you have those people on the fringes. How hard they hang off the edge, and how many they can convert to "edgers" informs where the average point will be. So if the moderate software moralist is half way between Bill Gates and Richard Stallman, one would imagine that the mean average would be slightly left leaning, slightly pro FOSS, but ultimately pragmatic. Were Bill Gates any more megalomaniacal, or Richard Stallman any more bonkers, the mean might shift. The problem lies with the repugnance. Only those already willing to feel the pain are willing to align with RMS fully. To most of the rest of the world, we see pieces like this and bristle; we recognise that freedom + cost = nonfree - it's not free if we're shackling ourselves to a system that we can't use properly, or have to cart around dongles to duplicate the functionality already theoretically in our machines. However keenly we do or don't recognise the moral shackles, we'll certainly recognise the convenience shackles. Of course, FOSS isn't RMS' only soapbox. His GNU/Linux stance - to the point where he insists podcasts and publications change their name or he'll pull out last minute - creates a second repugnant pull in another direction. Again, the shackles are obvious, the moral imperative not so obvious, the sanity of the flag-bearer even less obvious. So yeah, you're not alone in it pushing you away. Thankfully, everyone within a standard deviation of the mean will ignore his ravings as he hangs on the edge. As the mean shifts, so will how far off the edge he hangs (until he drops). Feel free to go as close to the edge as you feel comfortable. And for everything else, shake your head and whisper (not my president) :D
- orblivion 8y ago
  We always have to weigh costs and benefits. But it's easy to make enough compromises and forget that your decisions were impure. That's why you have to have purists laying out what exactly it is you're compromising on, whether it be the FSF or your local church. Ideally we want to live something close to the "pure" lifestyle and also get the convenience we want. That requires dedication on the part of programmers to get us closer and closer to it. You can't get that kind of dedication from people who are halfway dedicated.
- greymeister 8y ago
  Just like rms, PETA and the ACLU do things I don't agree with, but philosophically, especially with FSF, EFF, and the ACLU, I think that their overall goal is one I agree with. No one has the time and attention to address everything, and so I am glad there are those that focus on each of these individual issues.
wmf 8y ago
Yet another self-defeating idea from RMS. If someone asks for Linux, we should either give them a broken version, refuse, or give them a lecture? Sad.
- fghtr 8y ago
  Did you actually read TFA? "given the fact that most install fests quietly play the role of the devil, I think that an explicit devil would be less bad. It would convert the install-fest dilemma from a debilitating contradiction into a teaching experience. Users would be able to get, if they insist, the nonfree drivers to make their peripherals run, then use GNU/Linux knowing that there is a further step toward freedom that they should take."
  - dang 8y ago
    Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow them when posting here?
- code_duck 8y ago
  Well, not exactly... the whole point of this idea is that they should provide a way for the install to be completed, but make it clear that a moral compromise is involved.
  - santoshalper 8y ago
    That will go really well. If there is one thing people love, it is moral conundrums related to electronic appliances.
    - krageon 8y ago
      Don't forget the people lecturing them for the full 30 minutes that they're busy installing a new OS.
      - 8y ago
AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
So, as a card-carrying member of the FSF, I'll weigh in. When I pull out my FSF card that contains a tiny flash drive with a Trisquel image on it [0], most people think it's incredibly cool and often allow me to demo it on some old PC/laptop they have lying around. The "demo" of Trisquel goes pretty well for about ten minutes (the DE is quite easy for people used to the Win 9x paradigm to understand), then I inevitably get to the point where they want to see the browser or something that requires internet, and it doesn't work. It doesn't work because there are very few desktops or laptops that ship with a wireless card supporting a completely free driver that Trisquel will ship. And that's where the conversation usually ends. Because if the free OS can't let the computer do the things the end-user expects it to do, they won't use it. It doesn't matter if they align practically or philosophically with the FOSS movement, a computer that can't access the internet is just a toy or a paperweight to them. [0]https://www.fsf.org/associate/benefits https://www.fsf.org/associate/benefits
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- sqrt17 8y ago
  > a computer that can't access the internet is just a toy or a paperweight to them. which would be a thing unheard of if we were still in 1993. We aren't, and you find people happily using iOS or Android devices that do mostly web browsing and video watching and would functionally be a toy or a paperweight if you transported them back to 1993. Computing has changed in the last 25 years. Paradoxically, more people are using FOSS than before while fewer would subscribe to the kind of Free Software purism (totalitarism?) that the FSF advocates. Windows running a (GNU/)Linux subsystem is a victory of Open Source, but a defeat for the Free Software movement. Which brings us to > if they align practically or philosophically with the FOSS movement and I'd call this a ruse - the Open Source movement developed as a countercurrent to FSF's ideology around Free Software mostly in the shape of people that liked Free Software (both as in Freedom and as in Beer) as well as software licensed under more liberal licenses but did not see the idea of Copyleft as central to their enterprise. There is a FOSS movement, replete with sympathisers and drama and everything around it, but it's at best a strict superset of the Free Software movement that also contains people with non-FSF-compatible opinions.
boucher 8y ago
This is a fairly amusing read. Favorite quote: This devil would be a human being disguised to teach a moral lesson with a theatrical metaphor, so let's not take the metaphor too far. I think we would do well not to say that users are “selling their souls” if they install nonfree software—rather, part of their own freedom is what they forfeit. We don't need to exaggerate to teach the point... I'm sympathetic to the FSF's goals, but I think they're desire for ideological purity prevents them from achieving meaningful wins. Increasing the availability and desirability of Free software shouldn't have to mean total exclusion of all non-Free software. As an industry, I think we should be more troubled by devices that aren't even allowed to run code without special permission from some third party. The App Store is a sad state of affairs in my opinion.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- SimonPStevens 8y ago
  Quote reformatted for mobile: This devil would be a human being disguised to teach a moral lesson with a theatrical metaphor, so let's not take the metaphor too far. I think we would do well not to say that users are “selling their souls” if they install nonfree software—rather, part of their own freedom is what they forfeit. We don't need to exaggerate to teach the point...
- smelendez 8y ago
  That part confused me. Having someone in a Devil costume is going to be scary, confusing or offensive to many people, so if it's not a great metaphor, why not pick another one? I think it's better to skip certain classes metaphors for this kind of event: religion, sex, death, disease (cancer, etc.) probably chief among them.
  - enriquto 8y ago
    ouch, you "serious" and "professional" people are so boring! It's a cute idea and respectfully presented. As long as the costume is clearly innocent you cannot fathom anybody being offended.
mindslight 8y ago
If someone is going to an install fest, their technical skills are not very strong. Especially in this day and age where plentiful devices means not rendering your only computer inoperable, but being able to follow along with online instructions! That user's effective freedom is very low, even if they're sitting in front of a fully documented Free machine! But they're interested in taking a step in the right direction, even though they will not reap the full benefits for quite some time. This must not be squandered! The problem here is that emphasizing the negative association still ties it to GNU/Linux - first, the presence of a visible "devil", and second the difficulty of being confronted with an overt looked-down-upon decision that is not fully understood. Rather, people respond better to the carrot. They should be informed - they might indeed have a different machine that would be a better fit for Linux. And they should walk away knowing that the machine they have is not perfect from a Freedom standpoint. But how are they supposed to care enough to influence a purchasing decision, especially of a new machine, if we make it difficult for them to become accustomed to the benefits of Freedom? A machine loaded with all proprietary blob drivers still showcases the results of Freedom quite well - similar to why there is such big business in taking Free software and locking it up with DRM/HTTP, but I digress. In general, RMS really needs to reconsider the nuance of how he applies his philosophy to the modern world. While he has been extremely prescient and unyielding for the overall war, he keeps wanting to fight the original battle rather than many of the new fronts that have sprung up. For example, he uses a T400 laptop - what storage device does it have? I guarantee it runs non-free firmware from flash. There is little difference between this and AMD's graphics firmware blob files, if the latter is only ever loaded under Free control. Condemning the latter because it puts the blob front and center in our faces is fundamentally a symptom of failing to flesh out the paradigm of what applied Freedom means, and without that we cannot hope to defend it!
- gubbrora 8y ago
  RMS has a role to play precisely because he is unyielding and refuses to be pragmatic. Most of us here are pragmatists. We are trying to get things done as best as we can. Therefore we shouldn't follow his advice. But we should take it into consideration. "This is what could be"
ebg13 8y ago
This problem is why I use https://fiendish.github.io/The-Debian-Gotham-Needs/ https://fiendish.github.io/The-Debian-Gotham-Needs/ for downloading Debian ISOs, because I know that I'm going to need nonfree firmware for it to actually do the things that I want it to do (and finding the right ISO on the Debian website is a godawful nightmare). I think the page takes the most rational approach by informing the person about the danger to user freedoms imposed by non-free software while, and this is very important, letting the person just get on with their life right now. Stallman's proposal sounds...cartoonish and annoying and IMO ultimately harmful. I think the only way to get people who aren't already dedicated to want to use free software is if using it doesn't make them annoyed first.
- oda 8y ago
  How is it a nightmare? The site you linked literally just links to one of the images under here https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-in... , and not even the most useful one. It'd be more appropriate to link to the multi-arch image because there are many Bay Trail era devices stuck with a wonky 32 bit UEFI / 64 bit processor combination.
  - ebg13 8y ago
    > How is it a nightmare? Explain how to get from https://debian.org https://debian.org to the right download link. Measure how many clicks it involves, how much knowing exactly the right thing to look for it involves, how many paragraphs you have to wade through, how much backtracking if you go down the not obviously wrong but still wrong nonetheless path it involves. Can you even get to it from the "Get Debian" page without halting a download, truncating the url, and then digging around in a directory tree? I'm not sure, but I don't think so. In short, take yourself outside of your "I already know the right answer" head and approach it from someone else's perspective. The fact that your answer is "just use this arcane url that doesn't mean anything, is hard or impossible to find from the landing page even for an experienced person, and also isn't unambiguously googlable without exactly the right techno jargon" is striking to me. The Debian onboarding experience for normal people is terrible. > It'd be more appropriate to link to the multi-arch image because there are many... I disagree with your use of the word "many" and its relevance and whether multiarch solves more problems than it causes, but I acknowledge your beliefs. ( * shrug * )
thothamon 8y ago
Ugh, I think you get to pick between "strict purity" and something other than strict purity -- you can't have both. You can't deliberately tolerate something you deem to be devilish without becoming morally soiled by it. You can't perform an act that you call evil, or tolerate and implicitly encourage the act, and then in the next breath condemn it. Either you have to maintain strict purity, or you have to acknowledge on some level that real life is not especially compatible with strict purity, and sometimes compromise is, at a minimum, necessary and to some degree desirable. There's no logical way around this, and trying to force there to be a logical way around it gives you this kind of wink wink, nod nod, say-no-more sort of idea.
rblatz 8y ago
What distro are they installing at an install fest? I assume the users going to these would typically be in the lower half of the tech savviness distribution. So a user friendly distro like Ubuntu or Mint would make sense, but they include non-free coode in them. If they install some weird hobby distro, that doesn't have a large community around it to help support users I'd expect to scare users entirely away from Linux.
- nerdponx 8y ago
  Debian disables non-free software by default.
- jackbravo 8y ago
  And those distros usually have a checkbox on their installation wizards asking whether or not you want to install non-free software. https://www.2daygeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ubuntu-15-04-installation-steps-screenshot-3.png https://www.2daygeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ubuntu-1...
- misnome 8y ago
  From the sounds of it, Ubuntu is a definite no-no: > But it is hard to trust a devil to do wrong only within certain limits. What is to stop the devil from offering to install a GNU/Linux distro such as Ubuntu[..]?
neilv 8y ago
I don't know how this situation with most WiFi hardware being FSF-hostile will ever change. People who care (be they end users, enterprises, Linux kernel developers, or distro developers) don't provide sufficient motivation to the manufacturers. Part of the reason might be that, even if one is generally aligned with the FSF's goals, the distinction the FSF makes, based on where the closed firmware is stored, isn't very compelling, IMHO. Most people need a good reason to incur the high costs of FSF-friendliness. (I've compromised on this, myself. In 2010, the Debian Live variant utility stick distro I made bundled the `non-free` drivers, since that was already a problem then. Though I have bought FSF-friendly `ath9k` PCIe WiFi cards for my own use. And I even went through the massive headache of converting several ThinkPad X200 units to Coreboot, which let me put FSF-friendly mini-PCIe WiFi cards in them. I never would've done the latter, had I known how much work it would be.)
misnome 8y ago
This is absolutely Cuckoo, even for RMS. Take people, probably leaning nontechnical who have an interest in trying OSS and try to explicitly impose on them the concept that they are wrong and you are right and they are 'dealing with the devil' if they don't see things your way. They will be put off linux and the FOSS community for life. It's not like we don't have years of evidence of what happens if you try to impose your idea of politics on someone. If you really want people to care, then you need to introduce them slowly, and even then - without appreciating some sort of obstacle (like a technical user trying to get their wifi or graphics cards working) I'm not sure it's so easy, because most people have other priorities.
- blihp 8y ago
  Unfortunately, this is absolutely in character for him. I also sort of hope that people try what he's suggesting since it will almost certainly backfire. It's not that I want him or the install fests to fail (I'm a big fan and user of Debian), but rather it would be nice if the hard line folks would get a clue and understand that they need to offer viable alternatives rather than telling people to 'just say no'. Maybe lines of people waiting for 'the Devil' would make that clear? (OK, probably nothing would change... but I can dream...)
yongjik 8y ago
Is "install fest" actually a thing? I thought people just download whatever OS they want to install these days...?
- WalterGR 8y ago
  It was a thing in the 90s. Is it still a thing? I don’t know. Probably on college campuses, organized by comp sci majors.
type0 8y ago
> My new idea is that the install fest could allow the devil to hang around, off in a corner of the hall, or the next room. (Actually, a human being wearing sign saying “The Devil,” and maybe a toy mask or horns.) The devil would offer to install nonfree drivers in the user's machine to make more parts of the computer function ... Oh, but this should only be suitable if it's done with FreeBSD and not some Gnuuh-slash-leenacks.
csdreamer7 8y ago
Urgh... this is perhaps one of the worst positions for the FSF to take at this point. This is a position you take if 10% of the desktop market was already running a mostly free operating system and APIs. (Making a distinction between GNU and Chrome OS). Once you have enough mindshare to expose people to what Free Software, community developed software, software they can have control over (either by learning how to program or being able to pay someone to do it). Then you push to wipe out these crappy binary blobs. At this point, with less than 1%, Microsoft could lock out every Linux user from modern hardware by refusing to sign an UEFI kernel. Things have gotten better. Dell provides a few Linux laptops for desktop users. System76 is great... even if their machines look a little dated. Steam's Proton is a godsend. But the Linux desktop still hasn't broken out of the a few niche areas. Chrome OS has more market share than all other desktop Linuxes. We haven't gotten past 2% and in many Asian countries we are falling behind even more. You can't tell people they are only ethical if they use a modern laptop without working wifi. They won't care. A lot of people just don't care about technology. They just want it to work! But once you reach 10%; you have network effects people can rely on and feel confident about choosing a Free Operating System. If you point out this Free Software sticker means it works better for Linux/BSD/Haiku because you have control over the code that runs your wifi/whatever, then people will care.
santoshalper 8y ago
The degree to which Richard Stallman lives on another planet, entirely divorced from the reality of human behavior, cannot be overstated. We can't even get people to ditch facebook when it is obviously and actively harmful to them on almost every dimension because people simply do not care. The idea that any of them would futz around trying to compile drivers from source code is ludicrous.
hnuser123457 8y ago
You are a giant faggot and I hope you die of the simian HIV you contracted after your last gangbang with a troop of niggers.

56 points by lelf 8y ago

I'm all for OSS, but reading things like this really make me think of the community as totally nuts. I don't have the time in my life to get this worked up over OSS, and I don't have the time to avoid the smallest paid software package. I guess I am glad that a community like this exists to push OSS forwards, but I wonder how much this pushes away more moderate people. Would the ecosystem be as easy for a moderate like me to enter were it not for these fringe envelope pushers? Would it be slightly harder to enter, but offset by the larger number of developers not alienated by the apparent gung-ho anti-establishment attitude? In the end I think it's a benefit but it does push me away.

peterarmstrong 8y ago
Speaking of OSS: essentially the whole reason that the term "Open Source Software" exists is because the Free Software Foundation often comes across like this. "Free Software" is the brand for people who think that modest proposals like this one are reasonable; Open Source is the brand for actually pragmatic people. The fact that you'll write "I'm all for OSS, but..." shows how successful this cultural branding effort has been...
noir_lord 8y ago
Nuts or not they fight the good fight on our behalf by acting as an anchor at the other end of the spectrum. Even if I’m not as ardent about it as a beneficiary of open source in all its forms I can understand the viewpoint of those who are. There is value in that I think.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jolmg 8y ago
  > There is value in that I think. Yes, thinking does have value. :P > There is value in that, I think. Totally agree with your comment, though.
- santoshalper 8y ago
  It's a tough call. I do see the logic in what you're saying, but when I read things like this, he seems more like PETA than anything else: actively harmful to his movement. Basically a walking, talking strawman.
- a-nikolaev 8y ago
  Richard Stallman is important as a visionary. I think, his views may be really impractical short-term, but he is often spot-on long-term. Taking him seriously and listening to his opinion is worth the effort, I think.
  - laughinghan 8y ago
    Interesting. What are some examples of things he predicted in the past that were really impractical short-term, but turned out to be spot-on long-term?
    - a-nikolaev 8y ago
      I don't have specific examples off the top of my head. This is just the realization I had after reading and watching his talks and articles. You can google "stallman was right" and "stallman was wrong", and see where he got it right or not. I did some search, and this discussion seems helpful and exactly on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3417033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3417033
    - greymeister 8y ago
      I would say the modern state of surveillance capitalism is in a large part what rms warned about with proprietary systems being used against the user.
undecisive 8y ago
No, not the community. Richard Stallman. In any community - social, religious, utility - you have those people on the fringes. How hard they hang off the edge, and how many they can convert to "edgers" informs where the average point will be. So if the moderate software moralist is half way between Bill Gates and Richard Stallman, one would imagine that the mean average would be slightly left leaning, slightly pro FOSS, but ultimately pragmatic. Were Bill Gates any more megalomaniacal, or Richard Stallman any more bonkers, the mean might shift. The problem lies with the repugnance. Only those already willing to feel the pain are willing to align with RMS fully. To most of the rest of the world, we see pieces like this and bristle; we recognise that freedom + cost = nonfree - it's not free if we're shackling ourselves to a system that we can't use properly, or have to cart around dongles to duplicate the functionality already theoretically in our machines. However keenly we do or don't recognise the moral shackles, we'll certainly recognise the convenience shackles. Of course, FOSS isn't RMS' only soapbox. His GNU/Linux stance - to the point where he insists podcasts and publications change their name or he'll pull out last minute - creates a second repugnant pull in another direction. Again, the shackles are obvious, the moral imperative not so obvious, the sanity of the flag-bearer even less obvious. So yeah, you're not alone in it pushing you away. Thankfully, everyone within a standard deviation of the mean will ignore his ravings as he hangs on the edge. As the mean shifts, so will how far off the edge he hangs (until he drops). Feel free to go as close to the edge as you feel comfortable. And for everything else, shake your head and whisper (not my president) :D
orblivion 8y ago
We always have to weigh costs and benefits. But it's easy to make enough compromises and forget that your decisions were impure. That's why you have to have purists laying out what exactly it is you're compromising on, whether it be the FSF or your local church. Ideally we want to live something close to the "pure" lifestyle and also get the convenience we want. That requires dedication on the part of programmers to get us closer and closer to it. You can't get that kind of dedication from people who are halfway dedicated.
greymeister 8y ago
Just like rms, PETA and the ACLU do things I don't agree with, but philosophically, especially with FSF, EFF, and the ACLU, I think that their overall goal is one I agree with. No one has the time and attention to address everything, and so I am glad there are those that focus on each of these individual issues.

wmf 8y ago

Yet another self-defeating idea from RMS. If someone asks for Linux, we should either give them a broken version, refuse, or give them a lecture? Sad.

fghtr 8y ago
Did you actually read TFA? "given the fact that most install fests quietly play the role of the devil, I think that an explicit devil would be less bad. It would convert the install-fest dilemma from a debilitating contradiction into a teaching experience. Users would be able to get, if they insist, the nonfree drivers to make their peripherals run, then use GNU/Linux knowing that there is a further step toward freedom that they should take."
- dang 8y ago
  Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow them when posting here?
code_duck 8y ago
Well, not exactly... the whole point of this idea is that they should provide a way for the install to be completed, but make it clear that a moral compromise is involved.
- santoshalper 8y ago
  That will go really well. If there is one thing people love, it is moral conundrums related to electronic appliances.
  - krageon 8y ago
    Don't forget the people lecturing them for the full 30 minutes that they're busy installing a new OS.
    - 8y ago

AdmiralAsshat 8y ago

So, as a card-carrying member of the FSF, I'll weigh in. When I pull out my FSF card that contains a tiny flash drive with a Trisquel image on it [0], most people think it's incredibly cool and often allow me to demo it on some old PC/laptop they have lying around. The "demo" of Trisquel goes pretty well for about ten minutes (the DE is quite easy for people used to the Win 9x paradigm to understand), then I inevitably get to the point where they want to see the browser or something that requires internet, and it doesn't work. It doesn't work because there are very few desktops or laptops that ship with a wireless card supporting a completely free driver that Trisquel will ship. And that's where the conversation usually ends. Because if the free OS can't let the computer do the things the end-user expects it to do, they won't use it. It doesn't matter if they align practically or philosophically with the FOSS movement, a computer that can't access the internet is just a toy or a paperweight to them. [0]https://www.fsf.org/associate/benefits https://www.fsf.org/associate/benefits

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
sqrt17 8y ago
> a computer that can't access the internet is just a toy or a paperweight to them. which would be a thing unheard of if we were still in 1993. We aren't, and you find people happily using iOS or Android devices that do mostly web browsing and video watching and would functionally be a toy or a paperweight if you transported them back to 1993. Computing has changed in the last 25 years. Paradoxically, more people are using FOSS than before while fewer would subscribe to the kind of Free Software purism (totalitarism?) that the FSF advocates. Windows running a (GNU/)Linux subsystem is a victory of Open Source, but a defeat for the Free Software movement. Which brings us to > if they align practically or philosophically with the FOSS movement and I'd call this a ruse - the Open Source movement developed as a countercurrent to FSF's ideology around Free Software mostly in the shape of people that liked Free Software (both as in Freedom and as in Beer) as well as software licensed under more liberal licenses but did not see the idea of Copyleft as central to their enterprise. There is a FOSS movement, replete with sympathisers and drama and everything around it, but it's at best a strict superset of the Free Software movement that also contains people with non-FSF-compatible opinions.

boucher 8y ago

This is a fairly amusing read. Favorite quote: This devil would be a human being disguised to teach a moral lesson with a theatrical metaphor, so let's not take the metaphor too far. I think we would do well not to say that users are “selling their souls” if they install nonfree software—rather, part of their own freedom is what they forfeit. We don't need to exaggerate to teach the point... I'm sympathetic to the FSF's goals, but I think they're desire for ideological purity prevents them from achieving meaningful wins. Increasing the availability and desirability of Free software shouldn't have to mean total exclusion of all non-Free software. As an industry, I think we should be more troubled by devices that aren't even allowed to run code without special permission from some third party. The App Store is a sad state of affairs in my opinion.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
SimonPStevens 8y ago
Quote reformatted for mobile: This devil would be a human being disguised to teach a moral lesson with a theatrical metaphor, so let's not take the metaphor too far. I think we would do well not to say that users are “selling their souls” if they install nonfree software—rather, part of their own freedom is what they forfeit. We don't need to exaggerate to teach the point...
smelendez 8y ago
That part confused me. Having someone in a Devil costume is going to be scary, confusing or offensive to many people, so if it's not a great metaphor, why not pick another one? I think it's better to skip certain classes metaphors for this kind of event: religion, sex, death, disease (cancer, etc.) probably chief among them.
- enriquto 8y ago
  ouch, you "serious" and "professional" people are so boring! It's a cute idea and respectfully presented. As long as the costume is clearly innocent you cannot fathom anybody being offended.

mindslight 8y ago

If someone is going to an install fest, their technical skills are not very strong. Especially in this day and age where plentiful devices means not rendering your only computer inoperable, but being able to follow along with online instructions! That user's effective freedom is very low, even if they're sitting in front of a fully documented Free machine! But they're interested in taking a step in the right direction, even though they will not reap the full benefits for quite some time. This must not be squandered! The problem here is that emphasizing the negative association still ties it to GNU/Linux - first, the presence of a visible "devil", and second the difficulty of being confronted with an overt looked-down-upon decision that is not fully understood. Rather, people respond better to the carrot. They should be informed - they might indeed have a different machine that would be a better fit for Linux. And they should walk away knowing that the machine they have is not perfect from a Freedom standpoint. But how are they supposed to care enough to influence a purchasing decision, especially of a new machine, if we make it difficult for them to become accustomed to the benefits of Freedom? A machine loaded with all proprietary blob drivers still showcases the results of Freedom quite well - similar to why there is such big business in taking Free software and locking it up with DRM/HTTP, but I digress. In general, RMS really needs to reconsider the nuance of how he applies his philosophy to the modern world. While he has been extremely prescient and unyielding for the overall war, he keeps wanting to fight the original battle rather than many of the new fronts that have sprung up. For example, he uses a T400 laptop - what storage device does it have? I guarantee it runs non-free firmware from flash. There is little difference between this and AMD's graphics firmware blob files, if the latter is only ever loaded under Free control. Condemning the latter because it puts the blob front and center in our faces is fundamentally a symptom of failing to flesh out the paradigm of what applied Freedom means, and without that we cannot hope to defend it!

gubbrora 8y ago
RMS has a role to play precisely because he is unyielding and refuses to be pragmatic. Most of us here are pragmatists. We are trying to get things done as best as we can. Therefore we shouldn't follow his advice. But we should take it into consideration. "This is what could be"

ebg13 8y ago

This problem is why I use https://fiendish.github.io/The-Debian-Gotham-Needs/ https://fiendish.github.io/The-Debian-Gotham-Needs/ for downloading Debian ISOs, because I know that I'm going to need nonfree firmware for it to actually do the things that I want it to do (and finding the right ISO on the Debian website is a godawful nightmare). I think the page takes the most rational approach by informing the person about the danger to user freedoms imposed by non-free software while, and this is very important, letting the person just get on with their life right now. Stallman's proposal sounds...cartoonish and annoying and IMO ultimately harmful. I think the only way to get people who aren't already dedicated to want to use free software is if using it doesn't make them annoyed first.

oda 8y ago
How is it a nightmare? The site you linked literally just links to one of the images under here https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-in... , and not even the most useful one. It'd be more appropriate to link to the multi-arch image because there are many Bay Trail era devices stuck with a wonky 32 bit UEFI / 64 bit processor combination.
- ebg13 8y ago
  > How is it a nightmare? Explain how to get from https://debian.org https://debian.org to the right download link. Measure how many clicks it involves, how much knowing exactly the right thing to look for it involves, how many paragraphs you have to wade through, how much backtracking if you go down the not obviously wrong but still wrong nonetheless path it involves. Can you even get to it from the "Get Debian" page without halting a download, truncating the url, and then digging around in a directory tree? I'm not sure, but I don't think so. In short, take yourself outside of your "I already know the right answer" head and approach it from someone else's perspective. The fact that your answer is "just use this arcane url that doesn't mean anything, is hard or impossible to find from the landing page even for an experienced person, and also isn't unambiguously googlable without exactly the right techno jargon" is striking to me. The Debian onboarding experience for normal people is terrible. > It'd be more appropriate to link to the multi-arch image because there are many... I disagree with your use of the word "many" and its relevance and whether multiarch solves more problems than it causes, but I acknowledge your beliefs. ( * shrug * )

thothamon 8y ago

Ugh, I think you get to pick between "strict purity" and something other than strict purity -- you can't have both. You can't deliberately tolerate something you deem to be devilish without becoming morally soiled by it. You can't perform an act that you call evil, or tolerate and implicitly encourage the act, and then in the next breath condemn it. Either you have to maintain strict purity, or you have to acknowledge on some level that real life is not especially compatible with strict purity, and sometimes compromise is, at a minimum, necessary and to some degree desirable. There's no logical way around this, and trying to force there to be a logical way around it gives you this kind of wink wink, nod nod, say-no-more sort of idea.

rblatz 8y ago

What distro are they installing at an install fest? I assume the users going to these would typically be in the lower half of the tech savviness distribution. So a user friendly distro like Ubuntu or Mint would make sense, but they include non-free coode in them. If they install some weird hobby distro, that doesn't have a large community around it to help support users I'd expect to scare users entirely away from Linux.

nerdponx 8y ago
Debian disables non-free software by default.
jackbravo 8y ago
And those distros usually have a checkbox on their installation wizards asking whether or not you want to install non-free software. https://www.2daygeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ubuntu-15-04-installation-steps-screenshot-3.png https://www.2daygeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ubuntu-1...
misnome 8y ago
From the sounds of it, Ubuntu is a definite no-no: > But it is hard to trust a devil to do wrong only within certain limits. What is to stop the devil from offering to install a GNU/Linux distro such as Ubuntu[..]?

neilv 8y ago

I don't know how this situation with most WiFi hardware being FSF-hostile will ever change. People who care (be they end users, enterprises, Linux kernel developers, or distro developers) don't provide sufficient motivation to the manufacturers. Part of the reason might be that, even if one is generally aligned with the FSF's goals, the distinction the FSF makes, based on where the closed firmware is stored, isn't very compelling, IMHO. Most people need a good reason to incur the high costs of FSF-friendliness. (I've compromised on this, myself. In 2010, the Debian Live variant utility stick distro I made bundled the `non-free` drivers, since that was already a problem then. Though I have bought FSF-friendly `ath9k` PCIe WiFi cards for my own use. And I even went through the massive headache of converting several ThinkPad X200 units to Coreboot, which let me put FSF-friendly mini-PCIe WiFi cards in them. I never would've done the latter, had I known how much work it would be.)

misnome 8y ago

This is absolutely Cuckoo, even for RMS. Take people, probably leaning nontechnical who have an interest in trying OSS and try to explicitly impose on them the concept that they are wrong and you are right and they are 'dealing with the devil' if they don't see things your way. They will be put off linux and the FOSS community for life. It's not like we don't have years of evidence of what happens if you try to impose your idea of politics on someone. If you really want people to care, then you need to introduce them slowly, and even then - without appreciating some sort of obstacle (like a technical user trying to get their wifi or graphics cards working) I'm not sure it's so easy, because most people have other priorities.

blihp 8y ago
Unfortunately, this is absolutely in character for him. I also sort of hope that people try what he's suggesting since it will almost certainly backfire. It's not that I want him or the install fests to fail (I'm a big fan and user of Debian), but rather it would be nice if the hard line folks would get a clue and understand that they need to offer viable alternatives rather than telling people to 'just say no'. Maybe lines of people waiting for 'the Devil' would make that clear? (OK, probably nothing would change... but I can dream...)

yongjik 8y ago

Is "install fest" actually a thing? I thought people just download whatever OS they want to install these days...?

WalterGR 8y ago
It was a thing in the 90s. Is it still a thing? I don’t know. Probably on college campuses, organized by comp sci majors.

type0 8y ago

> My new idea is that the install fest could allow the devil to hang around, off in a corner of the hall, or the next room. (Actually, a human being wearing sign saying “The Devil,” and maybe a toy mask or horns.) The devil would offer to install nonfree drivers in the user's machine to make more parts of the computer function ... Oh, but this should only be suitable if it's done with FreeBSD and not some Gnuuh-slash-leenacks.

csdreamer7 8y ago

Urgh... this is perhaps one of the worst positions for the FSF to take at this point. This is a position you take if 10% of the desktop market was already running a mostly free operating system and APIs. (Making a distinction between GNU and Chrome OS). Once you have enough mindshare to expose people to what Free Software, community developed software, software they can have control over (either by learning how to program or being able to pay someone to do it). Then you push to wipe out these crappy binary blobs. At this point, with less than 1%, Microsoft could lock out every Linux user from modern hardware by refusing to sign an UEFI kernel. Things have gotten better. Dell provides a few Linux laptops for desktop users. System76 is great... even if their machines look a little dated. Steam's Proton is a godsend. But the Linux desktop still hasn't broken out of the a few niche areas. Chrome OS has more market share than all other desktop Linuxes. We haven't gotten past 2% and in many Asian countries we are falling behind even more. You can't tell people they are only ethical if they use a modern laptop without working wifi. They won't care. A lot of people just don't care about technology. They just want it to work! But once you reach 10%; you have network effects people can rely on and feel confident about choosing a Free Operating System. If you point out this Free Software sticker means it works better for Linux/BSD/Haiku because you have control over the code that runs your wifi/whatever, then people will care.

santoshalper 8y ago

The degree to which Richard Stallman lives on another planet, entirely divorced from the reality of human behavior, cannot be overstated. We can't even get people to ditch facebook when it is obviously and actively harmful to them on almost every dimension because people simply do not care. The idea that any of them would futz around trying to compile drivers from source code is ludicrous.

hnuser123457 8y ago

You are a giant faggot and I hope you die of the simian HIV you contracted after your last gangbang with a troop of niggers.