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It's a bit weird to me that an org that's been around for as long as GNU has such a black-and-white view of the software security/privacy/ownership landscape, w

It's a bit weird to me that an org that's been around for as long as GNU has such a black-and-white view of the software security/privacy/ownership landscape, when real life is a fair bit more nuanced. Yeah, Apple and their ecosystem aren't saints, and their position on right-to-repair policies is reprehensible, but neither is Android, which runs on a Linux kernel, and from a privacy perspective, reasonable people could argue that Apple's doing a better job than Google is with Android. GNU unfortunately doesn't see the other dimension here -- usability. There's basically nothing that's come out of GNU in recent memory that's been competitive in terms of usability and mass-market appeal (discounting coreutils, which are the de-facto usability standard for loads of command-line UIs, but their mass market are developers, sysadmins, and power users). As long as GNU keeps preaching this kind of absolutist position where the downsides of corporate-owned software ecosystems exist in a vacuum, they'll come off as doomsayers to many observers. Having said all that, DRM does suck and I believe their position there is fully justified.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jordigh 7y ago
Not that it makes too much of a difference, but GNU has no love for Android either. They certainly aren't saying anything nice about macOS just because its kernel is also free.
rhinoceraptor 7y ago
The FSF really needs better marketing and prioritization. Imagine how much time and attention they spent just fighting the Linux vs GNU/Linux debate, something that essentially no one cares about.
- fao_ 7y ago
  > The FSF really needs better marketing and prioritization. Imagine how much time and attention they spent just fighting the Linux vs GNU/Linux debate, something that essentially no one cares about. And yet almost everyone I know in tech knows about it, even my non-tech friends that use mastodon and pleroma have heard jokes about it. So given the exposure it's got them, it was pretty good for marketing.
  - wastedhours 7y ago
    Given the point of Mastodon I'd wager quite strongly that the Venn diagram of users of Mastodon and those who are likely to have heard an anecdote about the FSF overlap by quite a way. I could be wrong on that, but my personal anecdata is that noone who doesn't already care about free software is really aware of their message about free software.
    - fao_ 7y ago
      Sure, but that doesn't mean that those users care about free software, and most of the mastodon instances don't really advertise GNUisms. Especially for people only joining because their friends have left twitter for the fediverse
  - pwinnski 7y ago
    "non-tech friends that use mastodon" suggests that you are using a definition of "non-tech" many people would not recognize.
    - fao_ 7y ago
      Most of the people I see on mastodon are queer people that are not interested in programming or computer science and know maybe what GNU/Linux is but not know what Linux or GNU is. Signing up to a mastodon and pleroma instance is as painless as joining twitter (less painless, actually), and using it is the same. There was a mass migration of queer people a year or so back due to twitter's repeated banning of people who disagree with TERFs, but not the actual harassing TERFS themselves. There have been a couple more migrations since. Queer Twitter Culture is very tightknit -- moreso than tech culture -- and that's not including the three handshakes rule of thumb. Some anecdata: My ex, whose parent is interested in computers but she herself does not have much of an interest and only barely knows what Linux is, joined mastodon before me, and the majority of her three hundred-odd follows do not know what Linux is. Most cishet groups don't have a clue about mastodon or won't budge from facebook because they don't have a reason. The blatantly fascist-supporting twitter moderators, and the hostility of facebook's real name policy has given that incentive to queer people.
kgwxd 7y ago
Mass-market appeal isn't a primary goal of GNU, et al. Mass-market appeal is a means to an end for business. There exist a very large amount of projects that are both libre and very usable, but they don't all integrate with each other into a cohesive suite of products. Purism tried to put a thin layer over some fundamental tools and present them a suite, but the community hasn't embraced it (yet?), rejected it even. I think we should take another look at what they're trying to do from that perspective.
fao_ 7y ago
> It's a bit weird to me that an org that's been around for as long as GNU has such a black-and-white view of the software security/privacy/ownership landscape, when real life is a fair bit more nuanced. But that's what allows them to exist this long. A clear consistent message that is both unusual and takes no prisoners.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  I would argue that "Apple's Operating Systems Are Malware" does not fall in line with their clear, consistent message.
  - fao_ 7y ago
    It's a premise derived from the message that is sensational to attract people while staying on-brand
rvz 7y ago
> ...but neither is Android, which runs on a Linux kernel The same goes for Ubuntu which runs Amazon Ads and sends usage statistics by default. > As long as GNU keeps preaching this kind of absolutist position where the downsides of corporate-owned software ecosystems exist in a vacuum, they'll come off as doomsayers to many observers. The FSF was absolutely spot on of raising privacy issues and that has forced a privacy overhaul throughout the entire tech industry. However it is still a shame at how they still cannot convince users to stop using non-free OSes or applications since they don't understand that most end users aren't willing to put the effort into migrating to another platform or to sacrifice convenience over freedom. The only audience that seems to get the message are software engineers but not the average Joe or Jenny.
- _verandaguy 7y ago
  I've been developing software for the better part of a decade (granted, not the most senior developer around, but still) -- their message comes off as unreasonable to me, if only because it revolves around heavily criticising the state of the industry without offering a clear alternative for anyone. I say this as a former full-time user of a pretty huge chunk of their software offering, from emacs, to GCC, to screen -- over the years, I realised that many of their APIs or feature sets aren't modern, and better alternatives exist.
  - compiler-guy 7y ago
    The "clear alternative" that they offer is unusable for the masses, arcane even for the tech-literate, and almost completely unresourced for improvement, with no viable plan to make it so. I love FSF's products, contribute to them frequently, and use them every day for my job. But it is laughable to even dream that the alternative they present would be better for the average user, for almost any definition of "better" other than the most restricted FSF definition regarding no-compromise of any sort of "better freedom". Would I love it if there were more free, "better" alternatives to Apple, Microsoft and Google? You betcha. But there isn't one, and there is no viable path to one, and hasn't been since Stallman first rode out of the desert.
- SEJeff 7y ago
lisper 7y ago
> DRM does suck Yes, it does, but you can make the exact same kind of argument here that it is a necessary evil in the real world. Content creators really do have the right to enforce their copyrights, and it's clear that the honor system is not good enough to accomplish this. Just look at the reaction on HN whenever an article is posted that is behind a paywall. Many people simply feel somehow entitled to consume content without paying for it.
thefz 7y ago
> Apple and their ecosystem aren't saints, and their position on right-to-repair policies is reprehensible, but neither is Android, which runs on a Linux kernel Mac OSX is built upon FreeBSD with a custom kernel.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jordigh 7y ago

Not that it makes too much of a difference, but GNU has no love for Android either. They certainly aren't saying anything nice about macOS just because its kernel is also free.

rhinoceraptor 7y ago

The FSF really needs better marketing and prioritization. Imagine how much time and attention they spent just fighting the Linux vs GNU/Linux debate, something that essentially no one cares about.

fao_ 7y ago
> The FSF really needs better marketing and prioritization. Imagine how much time and attention they spent just fighting the Linux vs GNU/Linux debate, something that essentially no one cares about. And yet almost everyone I know in tech knows about it, even my non-tech friends that use mastodon and pleroma have heard jokes about it. So given the exposure it's got them, it was pretty good for marketing.
- wastedhours 7y ago
  Given the point of Mastodon I'd wager quite strongly that the Venn diagram of users of Mastodon and those who are likely to have heard an anecdote about the FSF overlap by quite a way. I could be wrong on that, but my personal anecdata is that noone who doesn't already care about free software is really aware of their message about free software.
  - fao_ 7y ago
    Sure, but that doesn't mean that those users care about free software, and most of the mastodon instances don't really advertise GNUisms. Especially for people only joining because their friends have left twitter for the fediverse
- pwinnski 7y ago
  "non-tech friends that use mastodon" suggests that you are using a definition of "non-tech" many people would not recognize.
  - fao_ 7y ago
    Most of the people I see on mastodon are queer people that are not interested in programming or computer science and know maybe what GNU/Linux is but not know what Linux or GNU is. Signing up to a mastodon and pleroma instance is as painless as joining twitter (less painless, actually), and using it is the same. There was a mass migration of queer people a year or so back due to twitter's repeated banning of people who disagree with TERFs, but not the actual harassing TERFS themselves. There have been a couple more migrations since. Queer Twitter Culture is very tightknit -- moreso than tech culture -- and that's not including the three handshakes rule of thumb. Some anecdata: My ex, whose parent is interested in computers but she herself does not have much of an interest and only barely knows what Linux is, joined mastodon before me, and the majority of her three hundred-odd follows do not know what Linux is. Most cishet groups don't have a clue about mastodon or won't budge from facebook because they don't have a reason. The blatantly fascist-supporting twitter moderators, and the hostility of facebook's real name policy has given that incentive to queer people.

kgwxd 7y ago

Mass-market appeal isn't a primary goal of GNU, et al. Mass-market appeal is a means to an end for business. There exist a very large amount of projects that are both libre and very usable, but they don't all integrate with each other into a cohesive suite of products. Purism tried to put a thin layer over some fundamental tools and present them a suite, but the community hasn't embraced it (yet?), rejected it even. I think we should take another look at what they're trying to do from that perspective.

fao_ 7y ago

> It's a bit weird to me that an org that's been around for as long as GNU has such a black-and-white view of the software security/privacy/ownership landscape, when real life is a fair bit more nuanced. But that's what allows them to exist this long. A clear consistent message that is both unusual and takes no prisoners.

saagarjha 7y ago
I would argue that "Apple's Operating Systems Are Malware" does not fall in line with their clear, consistent message.
- fao_ 7y ago
  It's a premise derived from the message that is sensational to attract people while staying on-brand

rvz 7y ago

> ...but neither is Android, which runs on a Linux kernel The same goes for Ubuntu which runs Amazon Ads and sends usage statistics by default. > As long as GNU keeps preaching this kind of absolutist position where the downsides of corporate-owned software ecosystems exist in a vacuum, they'll come off as doomsayers to many observers. The FSF was absolutely spot on of raising privacy issues and that has forced a privacy overhaul throughout the entire tech industry. However it is still a shame at how they still cannot convince users to stop using non-free OSes or applications since they don't understand that most end users aren't willing to put the effort into migrating to another platform or to sacrifice convenience over freedom. The only audience that seems to get the message are software engineers but not the average Joe or Jenny.

_verandaguy 7y ago
I've been developing software for the better part of a decade (granted, not the most senior developer around, but still) -- their message comes off as unreasonable to me, if only because it revolves around heavily criticising the state of the industry without offering a clear alternative for anyone. I say this as a former full-time user of a pretty huge chunk of their software offering, from emacs, to GCC, to screen -- over the years, I realised that many of their APIs or feature sets aren't modern, and better alternatives exist.
- compiler-guy 7y ago
  The "clear alternative" that they offer is unusable for the masses, arcane even for the tech-literate, and almost completely unresourced for improvement, with no viable plan to make it so. I love FSF's products, contribute to them frequently, and use them every day for my job. But it is laughable to even dream that the alternative they present would be better for the average user, for almost any definition of "better" other than the most restricted FSF definition regarding no-compromise of any sort of "better freedom". Would I love it if there were more free, "better" alternatives to Apple, Microsoft and Google? You betcha. But there isn't one, and there is no viable path to one, and hasn't been since Stallman first rode out of the desert.
SEJeff 7y ago

lisper 7y ago

> DRM does suck Yes, it does, but you can make the exact same kind of argument here that it is a necessary evil in the real world. Content creators really do have the right to enforce their copyrights, and it's clear that the honor system is not good enough to accomplish this. Just look at the reaction on HN whenever an article is posted that is behind a paywall. Many people simply feel somehow entitled to consume content without paying for it.

thefz 7y ago

> Apple and their ecosystem aren't saints, and their position on right-to-repair policies is reprehensible, but neither is Android, which runs on a Linux kernel Mac OSX is built upon FreeBSD with a custom kernel.