31 ms·

Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

277 points by fouc 7y ago

dang 7y ago
Threads from 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9711346 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9711346 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7435720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7435720 2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2239288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2239288
cat_plus_plus 7y ago
That's what makes me so furious at the morons who deplatformed RMS over some silly devil's advocate defense of Minsky on an internal mailing list. The guy has an important idea that he put most of his life into developing. In the process, he made programming much more inclusive than anyone could dream about in the days of proprietary operating system with compilers that sold for thousands of dollars. So even if having to deal with a difficult old man makes you feel a little less inclusive, it's not too crazy to give him some breaks. The kids who ran him out of town only know how to destroy, not how to create anything comparable to what he did.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  I don’t think that’s fair to those who had a problem with RMS. Him arguing about peodophilia on a mailing list does nothing at all to help his ideas spread. It takes quite a lot away in fact. What was the purpose of his argument? To defend his friend Minsky? Again, that does nothing to promote free software, it only adds unneeded and negative baggage. That’s bad leadership and bad for RMS’ message. Yes he had great ideas. They were so great that they exist beyond the man who created them and now benefit from him not being involved.
  - jnwatson 7y ago
    So just because he happens to be the president of an organization means he can’t defend his colleague on an unrelated private message board? The chilling effect of such a policy essentially means that all advocacy groups must be led by slick marketing politicians, always on-point and on-brand, even if off camera.
    - zorpner 7y ago
      This is a clear slippery slope fallacy. In this particular instance, all they had to do was not defend pedophiles, blame victims, and repeatedly engage in misogynistic behavior which literally drove women out of their discipline for decades.
    - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
      "an unrelated private message board?" Was this an unrelated private message board? I was under the impression it was on a mailing list at MIT.
      - ryeights 7y ago
        The list is semi-private, CSAIL-affiliated students and faculty only
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        SolaceQuantum 7y ago
        So not a private message board?
    - malvosenior 7y ago
      If he’s defending his colleague having sex with a 17 year old who had been trafficked for sex since she was 15, then yes I don’t think any president of an organization should do that.
      - wander_homer 7y ago
        His entire argument was that it was possible that he had no idea that she was a trafficking victim when she approached him, it could have been a regular prostitute from his point of view. However Stallman didn't downplay the harm that's been done to the girl and he didn't rule out the possibility that his friend indeed knew about all of that.
      - 7y ago
  - zaphirplane 7y ago
    you are wording the sentences to create a vague wrong impression Of what transpired Be specific about what he said that you find abhorrent This topic is uncomfortable and a lot of people stay out of it or strongly self censor. he didn’t.
    - malvosenior 7y ago
      > This topic is uncomfortable and a lot of people stay out of it or strongly self censor. he didn’t. This is my point. As the president of an organization it’s not your job to make people uncomfortable about things that have nothing to do with that organization’s goals. Debating what is and is not statutory rape is not a discussion that should take place in any professional or technical environment. This instance is actually even worse than just debating something in the inappropriate context. Epstein is a huge scandal. He raped dozens if not hundreds of girls. He loaned them out to other powerful people. It is within this context that RMS’ statements are most damning. He’s wading in some very murky ethical waters and it should be no surprise he caught a backlash.
      - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
        > As the president of an organization it’s not your job to make people uncomfortable about things that have nothing to do with that organization’s goals. Did anyone claim it was his job? > Debating what is and is not statutory rape is not a discussion that should take place in any professional or technical environment. Why? > This instance is actually even worse than just debating something in the inappropriate context. Epstein is a huge scandal. He raped dozens if not hundreds of girls. He loaned them out to other powerful people. It is within this context that RMS’ statements are most damning. Why is that? Does the fact that someone commits a crime make it inappropriate to defend people associated with them against incorrect accusations? How do you square that with the rule of law? > He’s wading in some very murky ethical waters and it should be no surprise he caught a backlash. He also should not be surprised that he gets a lot of opposition for promoting free software ... so, supposedly, he should not promote free software either?
      - zaphirplane 7y ago
- new_realist 7y ago
  OSS predates Stallman, and will outlast him. His contributions are overstated, as is the benefit of Free Software, generally, as compared to more permissive licenses.
  - flippinburgers 7y ago
    Free Software is transparent science. I don't see how you could argue that the benefit is overstated. Ideas are built on one another and that is precisely how advancements are made. What he pushes for is extremely important.
  - msla 7y ago
    > His contributions are overstated, as is the benefit of Free Software, generally, as compared to more permissive licenses. That's certainly what companies which made their fortunes out of taking software out of the commons and turning it into products want people to think. Enough programmers don't want to be turned into unpaid employees that copyleft licenses have substantial uptake. Also: > OSS predates Stallman, and will outlast him. ... refusing to see a distinction between OSS and Free Software? Neat rhetorical trick.
    - msla 7y ago
      The downvotes without replies are proof I've hit a nerve, and am saying things others cannot stand because they cannot refute them.
  - mistrial9 7y ago
    I met with Stallman once, in a room of two dozen people, around Stanford in 1987 or so .. I can tell you the "OSS" or whatnot you are referring to, existed in a very different world then. Stallman had a twenty minute talk, which was a strict and tightly worded explanation of the significance and reasoning behind his proposals. It was very much the utter opposite of a two line throw-away judge-and-jury declaration of conclusion, as seen above.
  - garmaine 7y ago
    The term “open source software” was invented by Christine Peterson in 1998 (edit: thanks!) to distinguish from GPL-style free software. Open source (inclusive of both) never really had any traction outside a few limited domains until the GNU project.
- ariabuckles 7y ago
  It wasn't just this incident. RMS alienated so many women from open source and free software over the last 30 years, and we've lost all of those potential contributions. He's been getting breaks for 30 years. That he has also done some very good things isn't a good argument for continuing to tolerate his harmful behaviour after he's been asked to fix it for literally decades, and hasn't.
  - sprafa 7y ago
    Didn’t know about this. Where can I read more about his behaviour around women?
    - ariabuckles 7y ago
      https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman and https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-a-a7e41e784f88 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix... are good starting points; I also saw threads about it from women MIT alumns on twitter.
      - norcalli 7y ago
        It would be horrifying to have meticulously documented notes on every thing you ever said that may or may not be true, and may or may not have been a joke. If his career had been a comedian and not a FOSS advocate, then would he still be crucified for saying the same things or would he simply be an awful comedian? I would be dollars to doughnuts that the author of that site and the editors of that "wiki" have made or thought worse things at some point, but because they have not reached a certain level of celebrity, there's no dossier on them. It's truly ridiculous to me the amount of effort spent on trying to claw others down. I accept that inequality exists and perhaps RMS has some awful opinions, but if that's the case then just ignore him. If there are people who are choosing to make it incumbent upon themselves to take down these "problematic" individuals, then it must be because they think that all of the systems that have allowed a person to continue to exist despite those opinions must be unreliable in adequately judging them. If that's the case, then wouldn't it be more practical to fix the endemic problem rather than destroy a single person? I'm guessing that the latter is just easier to do and more profitable as well. You gain "credibility" by attacking someone else, so it's difficult to believe that they are doing it for altruistic means. All in all, I'm pretty sick of this nonsense. A world where everyone is constantly being watched by eachother and reported on is already too authoritarian for me to want to continue living in, not to mention the already authoritarian governments doing the same.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- htns 7y ago
  Yeah, I wouldn't put anything under a "GPL or any later version" for the time being.
  - harry8 7y ago
    Writing anyone or any organisation a blank cheque is problematic. Even if they are perfection personified now, will they be in the future? Will it be run by none of the same people? Will they have an entirely different agenda to the one you agree with? If you can't know these things with sufficient certainty, definitely pick your license. Then only change it deliberately for your own purposes with your own goals and ideals driving it. Devils advocate: maybe gpl will never have a later version you could possibly disagree with as it's too important to too many people just like you.
- knolax 7y ago
  I saw a tweet on Mastodon that claimed Git was a "major barrier for people of color" or some other nonsense. Meritocracy is dying here.
  - pzone 7y ago
    That kind of talk always seems downright racist to me.
- hinkley 7y ago
  Until the latest stink I wasn't even aware that RMS still had a platform. I haven't heard from him in probably 15 years. That may be a good thing. FSF isn't about Richard Stallman. And some of the "kids" that ran him out of town know to keep plants at their desks because it turns out he's kind of a creep around young women, and also afraid of plants. None of that information has anything to do with mailing lists. There is always some reason that gets people to deal with a problem and that reason is often objectively kinda shitty. People overlook it because the problem is finally being addressed. One of the things that's going on in the current political climate is that it's no longer enough to be a great developer but a horrible human being. Development in the 90's was punctuated by some truly titanic man-children that everyone had to 'put up with' because they were just so good at the rest of their job. Gates seems to have grown up (I'm curious what Ballmer has been up to). Jobs, god bless him, died of his own stubbornness. They keep Ellison out of the spotlight, as they seem to have done with Stallman. Until he retires that leaves Torvalds (who I hope outlasts Ellison). I am sure there were points in my life where I could be painted with that brush, and I can say with a bit of authority that we don't need that kind of behavior. And if behavior is tolerated at the top then it's effectively tolerated everywhere.
  - concordDance 7y ago
    > There is always some reason that gets people to deal with a problem and that reason is often objectively kinda shitty The problem is that that reason is the one people think is the reason the problem got dealt with. It has a nasty chilling effect.
  - craigsmansion 7y ago
    > and also afraid of plants from someone who actually worked with him: "p.s.: In the closet-sized "office" Bushnell, McGrath, and I shared for a time we did have some spider plants as part of a running silly joke. They did not actually scare RMS away OF COURSE" https://archive.is/7qepC https://archive.is/7qepC
sn41 7y ago
In the years to come, I believe free software will be recognised as one of the paradigmatic changes in how science itself is done. Now chemists and biologists have started talking about making data openly available and so forth. It's a shame that RMS has to spout forth on every issue, and in the current climate of outrage, science may have lost an important transformational voice. I think as a society, we need to calm down a bit. We should not blacklist people merely based on opinions. We are one step away from thoughtcrime, and need to step back.
- Frondo 7y ago
  The complaints about stallman aren't a matter of thoughtcrime, they're a matter of entirely inappropriate behavior, not just once but repeatedly, over the course of decades. This was the one that disturbed me the most: "Going to an RMS talk in the early 90s and meeting with him in person was among the worst of my experienced - I was fifteen, still obviously underage, and skipping gym class to hear him speak at a professional conference (that I'd snuck into). He actually pointed to me in the back and proclaimed, into the mic, "A GIRL!" causing the audience to turn and look. Mortifying. Then he proceeded to gesture toward me every time he referred to "EMACS Virgins." (I cannot believe that he is still doing the same talk 10+ years later.) I was young and terrified of calling out someone that I'd previously idolized." Did he commit a crime? No. Should we overlook it, and should he remain in a leadership position at a prestigious organization? I can't imagine so; what kind of message does that send? Anecdote from: https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Experiences https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Experiences
  - quickthrower2 7y ago
    Wow. Terrible. Hope she wasn't put off computer science / IT by that.
  - zapzupnz 7y ago
    > The complaints about stallman aren't a matter of thoughtcrime, they're a matter of entirely inappropriate behavior, not just once but repeatedly, over the course of decades Indeed. A lot of people leaping to his defence have only a very surface-level understanding of his past record and think the accusations are something new or recent. Nobody expects the people who change the world to be perfect, but it really doesn't do to defend people based purely on their reputation. It's unjust to let influential people off the hook just because they're influential. Please note: I'm not pronouncing any opinion on whether his condemnation and dismissal are justified.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
The free software movement campaigns for freedom for the users of computing; it is a movement for freedom and justice. By contrast, the open source idea values mainly practical advantage and does not campaign for principles. If you read through more of the article, it becomes clear that the difference in viewpoint has actual real world impact on the type of licensing practices that result. Promoting a particular principle or ethos matters because it is like the DNA of the idea. Different DNA gets you completely different results.
scarejunba 7y ago
There's also the beauty in the point of Free Software: it's for freedom. This means it's okay that others profit. It's about you having power. That means you have the power to profit too. All you gotta share is the code for what you distribute. I like free software not because no one is making money. I like people making money. I like it because I can change it. That's important and everyone who gets upset simply because people profit is not necessarily on the same side as me. I don't want communist shared ownership of all things. I want the power to modify and run my software. That's all. It is actually like free speech. I want it for those who aren't like me and those are who like me.
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  What I could never get my head around when reading about free software is how can people, especially individuals or small companies make money making free software. Sure you can sell it but then the buyer is free to sell it for half the price. One way is if the software is a marketing tool for selling something else. Then people sharing or using it is good for marketing the other service. Another way is if the product is useless to the customer base in source form so they need to buy the compiled version, and aren’t technical enough to do it themselves. But in general making software to sell needs a propitery license if you want to make money.
  - garmaine 7y ago
    Red Hat...
    - eesmith 7y ago
      Pretty much every other company which has tried that model has failed.
  - madacoo 7y ago
    https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite This software uses a license that seems to solve both the problem of ensuring the user has control over the software and also allowing the author to sell and distribute binaries without worrying (too much) about others undermining his control over the market. It appears to work quite well in this case. Although I do not know how much he actually makes from software sales, it appears to be non-negligible based on its popularity within a niche community and the fact most users would rather pay $15 than learn the skills necessary to compile from source.
cindy8559 7y ago
I usually calculate here gpa calculator:, you try it https://gpa-calculator.online https://gpa-calculator.online
moron4hire 7y ago
To start, let me say that I believe in Free (libre) Software, as it is defined by the Software Freedoms. People should have the right to run the software they have, as they themselves see fit. That said, there is a lot wrong with open source and free software right now. First, and I think foremost, is that we’ve done ourselves a huge disservice in training users into believing that software should be gratis. Through the surveillance-driven ad economy for services, to FOSS adherents who insist they won’t pay for software, to smartphone app stores making it impossible to differentiate between products (and also, making it impossible to make a good product). Few people are willing to pay for software anymore (especially developers for development tools). This leaves software development to the privileged few who can afford to work for free, either because they work at a company that sees software as a loss-leader for some ad-economy service, or because they are financially independent. I cannot imagine how one might be able to replicate the 80s and 90s market where you could do hard work, make a great, common product like a word processor or an email client, and consumers would rejoice instead of snarl, “what do you mean you want money for this?” This consolidates power in the hands of Google, Microsoft, or worse, Oracle. Second, we have grown complacent and too accepting of crap. A lot of gratis software has very little polish (unless it’s being pushed by FAANG). People don’t want to pay for software because they rightly expect to have to try a dozen different packages before they find one that marginally works. Not getting paid means developers don’t have time to put into polish, nor any non-vanity signal to work on anything but neat features. With that, I think comes the ability for any actor of means to easily displace any smaller actor in the market. When a buyout happens, they don’t do it to acquire the technology anymore, they do it to acquire the users. We’ve raced ourselves to the bottom, so the only products we can afford to make are easily replicable by a 10x larger team. Or they don’t even have to replicate it, they just have to dump into marketing the kind of money that would setup any individual one of us for a nice, healthy, “fuck you” lifestyle. Third, because we haven’t fought “free software does not mean gratis”, companies demand software be permissively licensed or they won’t touch it. So they get to take your work and never pay you and it’s legal. You could GPL license instead and just get ignored, still not getting paid. You get to prove out the market for them, and then they copy your features, release under MIT, and don’t give a shit that they aren’t making money on it, because the only software they make money on is the ad seller console. I think we need to do several things: 1) grow a spine and a conscience, finally admit that there is no such thing as technology divorced from politics (it8s made for people, by people. Without people, it’s masturbation at best), and refuse to work for Google and Facebook, selling out our fellow citizens for a few bags of silver. 2) stop publicly publishing source code. The GPL doesn’t say you have to leave your source lying around in the open. It says you have to give it to your users. That’s fine. Users need lovin’ too, they just gotta pay first. 3) start taking a little more pride in our craft than, “I made a thing”. Software isn’t done until it is documented. It isn’t done until it’s usable without having to install Node and Python, just to run the setup. It isn’t done until it’s compliant with ADA and 508. With pride comes an expectation of remuneration. 4) stop “bucket of crabs”ing our fellow developers. If you don’t like something about a project, that is fine. But don’t call into question their fundamental right to exist. Too often I’ve seen projects cut down because they were “reinventing the wheel” or “just a solo dev”. Reinvention is important, or we wouldn’t have electric cars or faster computers or really anything. And solo devs wouldn’t be solo if you took them seriously and at least tried to put as much effort into supporting them as you put into cutting down their work. Realistically, I know this isn’t enough. But it can at least be a start. We can’t keep going on like this.
michannne 7y ago
It seems this thread and others like it has fueled a controversial honeypot, as some users are mass-downvoting comments that are perfectly in line with the content posted, simply because they stand for or against ousting Stallman, and others are doing the opposite -- mass upvoting comments that align with their predisposed view of the situation. I'd like to take sometime however to reiterate that freedom applies to all views. The ability of a user to use software regardless of their personal beliefs or background, what they want to use it for, or against. The choice of usage is completely and wholly up to the user, they may modify it to their heart's content, and the community can use those modifications freely for their purposes. Restricting viewpoints you don't align with is completely antithetical to the purpose of having free-as-in-speech software, and it is truly a shame, regardless of how you interpret the situation, that the poster-boy for these ideals has fallen from his position due to alternate views.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  As you can see in this thread and everywhere else it’s been recently discussed, Stallnan’s actions have detracted from his message. Now we talk about pedophilia because that’s what RMS introduced to an environment that should be discussing free software. He failed his own message by doing that. No one else is to blame.
  - linuxftw 7y ago
    > Stallnan’s actions have detracted from his message. Now we talk about pedophilia because that’s what RMS introduced to an environment that should be discussing free software Do you have an original source, or are you just parroting what you heard in the media?
    - malvosenior 7y ago
      Yes I’ve read the original email thread.
      - linuxftw 7y ago
bbanyc 7y ago
If RMS had given 1/1000 the consideration to women's feelings as he did to internecine disputes within the FOSS community, he might still have his job today.
- lostjohnny 7y ago
  you deserve your "fuck you" You came looking for it.
marknadal 7y ago
RMS misses the point of Open Source.
jheriko 7y ago
I still struggle to appreciate the merits of the (L)GPL's definition of free... MIT license all the way. It doesn't make me pay through the nose to be 'free' by following some arbitrary rules from elsewhere to fit into something I can only realistically see as a 'club'.
- knocte 7y ago
  That's because you're seeing the results of the license from the perspective of the developer, not the user.
  - millstone 7y ago
    For a user who is not a software developer, what is the practical difference between GPL and MIT? Is there one?
    - diffeomorphism 7y ago
      > For a user who is not a software developer, For a reader who is not a journalist, what is the value of free speech? Is there one?
      - andrerm 7y ago
        The day a journalist loses free speech is the day a reader loses it too. So the value is the same for both.
        diffeomorphism 7y ago
        I am not sure I understand the point you are trying to make. Both losing it at the same time does not say anything about the value? Devil's advocate: The journalist loses his job and livelihood. I had nothing to say anyways. Clearly to him it had much more value. I obviously agree that free speech is valuable for everyone (and so is free software), but how do you best explain why?
    - 7y ago
raneraiskari69 7y ago
"Geekfeminism" :D Can we leave cuck-leftist faggot "sources" out of the conversation.
ngcc_hk 7y ago
With just free software concept, it goes nowhere. Once have open source inclusive of free software, it explodes. You need innovation even in licensing. One man is just one human. Humanity is much larger then one man abd one sex. Walk on.
mindcrime 7y ago
I don't think Open Source "misses the point" of Free Software at all. I think both the Free Software movement and the Open Source movement are making different - albeit highly related - points. And the same goes for some of the other "Open X" movements" like the "Open Data" movement, "Open Science", "Open Culture", and so on. There's an inherent commonality at a certain level of abstraction, but each of these "things" is still independent in a sense. That said, I think it would be better to focus on where these various initiatives are aligned, and focus on how to work together to maximize the strengths of these various communities, as opposed to focusing on where they differ, and engaging in petty bickering. Of course there will be hard-liners who will reject this, and I can understand and appreciate a measure of that. I'm a bit of the same way when it comes to my radical anarcho-capitalist / libertarian political beliefs. I'm open to a certain measure of collaboration with others in the name of "any progress is better than no progress" and "don't let the perfect be the enemy of good enough", but there are principles that I'm unwilling to compromise on.
salawat 7y ago
Just wanted to drop a Cliff Notes of the RMS controversy. Specifically, Stallman has been accused of (1) Defending Jeffrey Epstein (while in reality Stallman was defending Marvin Minsky); (2) Describing Epstein's victims as entirely willing (while in reality Stallman was arguing that one specific victim of Epstein, Virginia Giuffre, was presented to Minsky as entirely willing because she was coerced by Epstein, not that she was entirely willing); (3) Defendinf pedophilia (while in reality Stallman was arguing that age doesn't matter in a case of rape because rape is always a terrible act no matter the age of the victim); (4) Defending pedophilia in the past (while in reality Stallman already countered his controversial claim from 2006 -in which he expressed skepticism in case of consensual sex- with a comment in 2013, where he said that children can't really be consensual); (5) Condoned sexual assault (while in reality Stallman was arguing that the term "sexual assault" does not fit the description of Minsky's act towards Virginia Giuffre since she wasn't assaulted by Minsky but coerced by Epstein; Stallman also added that the term is generally too vague as it refers to bad acts that can range from harmful to very harmful, and that the term usually makes readers think of the worst case); (6) Implying that the victim wasn't harmed (while in reality Stallman explicitly claimed that she was harmed); (7) Making comments that are excuses about rape, assault and child sex trafficking (while he condemned all three as explained above); (8) Used to keep a mattress in his MIT office, implying sexual activity and/or macho behavior at work (while in reality Stallman is known to have lived in his office for a certain period of his life). As a consequence of these writings, Stallman resigned from his position at MIT and also from his position at the Free Software Foundation. Sources in chronological order: September 12 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec210794 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21... September 13 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-described-epstein-victims-as-entirely-willing https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-sci... https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929/09132019142056-0001.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929/091320191... https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-defends-epstein-victims-were-entirely-willing https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-r... September 14 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September_2019_(Statements_about_Epstein) https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_Septe... Septembet 16 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-a-a7e41e784f88 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix... https://blog.halon.org.uk/2019/09/gnome-foundation-relationship-gnu-fsf/ https://blog.halon.org.uk/2019/09/gnome-foundation-relations... https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/sep/16/rms-does-not-speak-for-us/ https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/sep/16/rms-does-not-spea... https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#16_September_2019_(Resignation) https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#16_September... https://www.fsf.org/news/richard-m-stallman-resigns https://www.fsf.org/news/richard-m-stallman-resigns OTHER REFERENCES Stallman on his home https://stallman.org/rms-lifestyle.html https://stallman.org/rms-lifestyle.html Stallman on Pedophilia, 2006 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20June%202006%20%28Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party%29 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20Jun... Stallman on pedophilia, part deuce, 2013 https://stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_January_2013_%28Pedophilia%29 https://stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_January_2... There is a petition floating around for journalists to own up and post a retraction (not that anyone is expecting miracles), but if you're against having the Press straight up spreading lies, consider offering a signature. https://www.change.org/p/journalists-to-stop-the-persecution-of-stallman-and-apologize-publicly?recruiter=1005025247&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition https://www.change.org/p/journalists-to-stop-the-persecution... I leave it to every individuals conscience to make of it what they will... I just know that to me, this entire thing stinks to high heaven. I cannot see any way in which any of this boondoggle can be remotely said to have happened in good faith. Spread the word, or just at least make your decision on the most accurate information possible. For me, Free Software comes first, but a bit of journalistic integrity is also a primary concern. If journalists and these "cancel culture" are willing to go after the figurehead of the movement, and defile the primary values of the movement by twisting every detail imaginable, There is no real telling where things will stop. I'm not one to usually get fired up over this sort of thing, but I do insist that some semblance of integrity be maintained when trying to challenge something. If you have a good case, then it will see you through to the end. If you have to cheat and lie to get what you want, it stands to reason that the ground you are arguing from May not have been that solid in the first place. In the interests of keeping the "Free" in "Free Software" as good as the "Free" in "Free Beer"; please, raise awareness, and keep up the fight against disinformation. Thank you.
kyancey 7y ago
Every time I read stuff like this, I think it's the free software people who miss the point of open source.
jimmaswell 7y ago
Free software misses the point of open source. Open source wants to make the world a better place without strings attached, while free software just wants to push some bizzare ideology.
- adtac 7y ago
  Not bizarre in absolutely any way. The free software movement is a real thing that lobbies for you and me. Unlike silicon valley products, GPL and its siblings actually made the world a better place and to not recognise it is to be ungrateful. Even if making all software free is a dystopia, it's a good dystopia to strive towards.
  - jimmaswell 7y ago
    I could have gone my whole life without politically charged GPL utilities like gcc but Uber and AirBnB have been very useful to me.
- arnoooooo 7y ago
  Except nothing is "without strings attached" in life. To me "making the world a better place" is precisely about recognizing that everything is interdependent and setting up the right "strings", not about pretending we can live without them.
  - jimmaswell 7y ago
    The strategy doesn't even seem to really work. GPL stuff is generally just avoided and rewritten. So all you accomplished licensing with GPL was wasting worldwide developer time out of spite. Who knows if that wasted dev time might have cured cancer or something.
- diffeomorphism 7y ago
  Democracy misses the point of anarchy. Anarchy wants freedom without strings attached, while democracy puts limits. Technically true, but "you don't get to take away other's freedom" to me seems an entirely sensible restriction and not at all "bizarre".
jokoon 7y ago
I would really be interested in an explanation of why driver issues persist on linux, or at least why there were so many issues. Do vendors have financial preference to work with microsoft to write and maintain those drivers? I'm talking about things like touchpads, wifi... I can understand that if there's no demand, it makes no point for them, but even after all this time? Not to mention nvidia. What makes nvidia be so complacent towards linux? It has been almost 15 years now. Are there agreements between microsoft and nvidia? The arguments of Stallman make sense, but to me they don't explain the state of linux drivers, which made the linux desktop so difficult.
msiyer 7y ago
the problem we are discussing in this thread can be rephrased as - do i own my thoughts? only when we have an answer to this question can we properly progress as a society. else, we will keep expending resources to keep these debates alive.
2rsf 7y ago
Yesterday I have listened to the Hebrew version of this podcast, interesting and relevant: https://www.cmpod.net/all-transcripts/history-open-source-free-software-text/ https://www.cmpod.net/all-transcripts/history-open-source-fr...
rimliu 7y ago
FSF misses the point entirely. It operates on the assumptions of the long-gone world where every software uses was also a programmer. It used to be that way, but it will never be that way again. Nor should it.
ghaff 7y ago
Interestingly, one of the latest contretemps on Twitter etc. Lis the desire by some for open source licenses that restrict usage by purpose or organization. For example, ICE, military, law enforcement, etc. A much longer discussion obviously but an example where user freedoms more or less are counter to developers being able to restrict what their software gets used for once it’s been released as open source.
- Avamander 7y ago
  To be fair, if free software can restrict it's redistribution in closed devices, why not in cases where the use restricts user freedoms one step more indirectly?
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Also to be fair, that was a pretty controversial clause in GPLv3 and ended up getting largely de-fanged before the license was finalized. It’s not obvious to me that workable usage restrictions should automatically be off the table however.
    - Avamander 7y ago
      The Tivoization clause is good in my opinion, however it is now clear that OEMs would rather not implement a feature than not lock their boxes. In a way it's a success, no GPLv3 software will violate your user rights .-.
lbj 7y ago
What I fundamentally dislike about RMS' philosophy and the licenses its inspired, is that it values a developers time as nothing. As if the world has some fundamental right to everything that rolls out of my head.
- Avamander 7y ago
  How does it value that time as nothing?
  - lbj 7y ago
    If you invent a great piece of software, you need to be paid for the time you put into making it. If your only play is a license deal or such, open source will kill your business. Or turn it into something that RMS agrees with. But it wont be "your" business.
    - Avamander 7y ago
      But noone is forcing you to make software libre, with or without asking money for it.
      - lbj 7y ago
        Thankfully no force. Its just his philosophy
        Avamander 7y ago
        No, his philosophy doesn't suggest that either.
        orangeshark 7y ago
        You can sell your free software, RMS even encourages it. The reason a lot of the software is gratis is to lower the barrier to use and spread the software. This makes sense if you want to quickly spread an operating system composed of free software. Unfortunately that has become the default for most free and open source software, even for many proprietary software these days.
Myrmornis 7y ago
> we mean that it respects the users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes With open source but not "free" (sensu Stallman) software, one is free to run it and study it and change it, right? Since one has read permissions on the code. So the only difference is in distribution rights? So his sentence is misleading regarding the extent of the differences?
- olalonde 7y ago
  > So the only difference is in distribution rights? So his sentence is misleading regarding the extent of the differences? Yes, it's misleading. There's no practical difference between the two in terms of licensing. What this boils down to is that not all open source developers subscribe to the free software philosophy (e.g. believe that proprietary software is evil). Therefore, rms doesn't like the term.
  - Myrmornis 7y ago
    > There's no practical difference between the two in terms of licensing. Isn't it the case that (a) there could be / are open source projects with extremely restrictive licensing which totally prevents all distribution. I.e. a "copyright": you can still read and run the software and modify it for yourself, as long as you don't distribute it, and (b) such a project could never be "free" sensu Stallman?
    - olalonde 7y ago
      No, licensing that prevents distribution would disqualify it as "open source" software.
- orangeshark 7y ago
  Free software and open source software cover basically the same software. The main difference is that these communities value different parts of the software. Free Software supporters value the freedom aspects of the software, while Open Source Software supporters value the development practices to create powerful and reliable software. If you listen to these supporters on the benefits of releasing your software as Free and Open Source, you will hear completely different reasons why.
lostjohnny 7y ago
There a TL;DR; on the bottom. I'm very sympathetic with people (over)reacting to what Stallman said and did. I'm from a family where my parents and most of my uncles worked in healthcare. Specifically my dad worked in oncology and my mom in infectiuos diseases. I've seen patient's relatives panic because of some blood (after a very dangerous surgery) or complaining to the management because some other patient had sever pain and they could not stand them crying. People are tribal, they usually act as a tribe, if not educated differently or introduced to things they do not know. Of course I don't have to explain than when some of my friends needed to go to an hospital I was always regarded as the unemphatetic for saying things like "some blood is normal at this stage" or "the pain is gonna go away soon, don't worry" or "well, they amputated that man's leg, I bet I would be crying too. You can't complain about that" (this one really happened to me, when I had surgery to remove the saphenous vein, one of my parents friend came over to visit and asked me "why your parents keep you here with that man crying all the time?", I must specify that in Italy healthcare is mainly public, it was even more 25 years ago, you don't find the private hotel like rooms, and it worked much better than today, but that's another story). SJWs are the same: they only think about their group, their needs, their right words, without stopping to think for a moment that Stallman started 40 years ago and that for 40 years he resisted, you don't just throw him under the bus because he said something you don't like because you were never exposed to that kind of thinking. But Stallman would have defended their right to speak their minds if the role were reversed. And that's why I'm sympathetic with them because they don't even understand the damage they made to themselves. TL;DR; We should work together engaging in what makes us similar more than what makes us different. That's what Stallman did. Exactly 80 years ago Sigmund Freud died. > The narcissism of small differences (German: der Narzissmus der kleinen Differenzen) is the thesis that communities with adjoining territories and close relationships are especially likely to engage in feuds and mutual ridicule because of hypersensitivity to details of differentiation. The term was coined by Sigmund Freud in 1917, based on the earlier work of British anthropologist Ernest Crawley. In language differing only slightly from current psychoanalytic terminology, Crawley declared that each individual is separated from others by a taboo of personal isolation, a narcissism of minor differences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...
blobs 7y ago
'as free speech, not as free beer', to explain what is actually meant with 'free software' doesn't cut it for me. Why not just call it open source and pick the license you prefer? With all respect for Richard Stallman, the label 'free software' is a really poor word choice IMAO.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Precisely because of what RMS keeps saying - the thing is about software freedom, not software price. Software freedoms and Free Software came first. "Open Source" came later, as a "free just as in beer" spin-off.
  - blobs 7y ago
    It's not that I don't understand it, it's just very confusing for anyone hearing that for the first time. Is it freeware? No, it's like free speech not free beer. Come on, we can do better.
    - diffeomorphism 7y ago
      Most languages other than English do better. If English is not your native language "free speech" is also a confusing phrase.
tomxor 7y ago
> “Free software.” “Open source.” If it's the same software (or nearly so), does it matter which name you use? Yes, because different words convey different ideas. Even though i support FOSS over OSS, I've always found this particular argument a bit uselessly pedantic. Both of these term are almost always used casually not legally, when we want to do that (i.e when releasing software) we must use the highly specific language of a particular license anyway... which leaves only the following argument: > establishing freedom in a lasting way depends above all on teaching people to value freedom. For non-enterprise uses, how much OSS is not also FOSS? most people assume they are equal because the free part is implied, so do we really need to teach it? most software vendors understand this because they know the majority of people will just use it for free if the source is available regardless of whether it is explicitly given as free. It's too hard to enforce payment in any area except for enterprise... When this market force already exists, does it really help to create a social force to differentiate FOSS from OSS? I'm not sure, I think you just end up pissing off new FOSS enthusiasts.

277 points by fouc 7y ago

dang 7y ago

Threads from 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9711346 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9711346 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7435720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7435720 2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2239288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2239288

cat_plus_plus 7y ago

That's what makes me so furious at the morons who deplatformed RMS over some silly devil's advocate defense of Minsky on an internal mailing list. The guy has an important idea that he put most of his life into developing. In the process, he made programming much more inclusive than anyone could dream about in the days of proprietary operating system with compilers that sold for thousands of dollars. So even if having to deal with a difficult old man makes you feel a little less inclusive, it's not too crazy to give him some breaks. The kids who ran him out of town only know how to destroy, not how to create anything comparable to what he did.

malvosenior 7y ago
I don’t think that’s fair to those who had a problem with RMS. Him arguing about peodophilia on a mailing list does nothing at all to help his ideas spread. It takes quite a lot away in fact. What was the purpose of his argument? To defend his friend Minsky? Again, that does nothing to promote free software, it only adds unneeded and negative baggage. That’s bad leadership and bad for RMS’ message. Yes he had great ideas. They were so great that they exist beyond the man who created them and now benefit from him not being involved.
- jnwatson 7y ago
  So just because he happens to be the president of an organization means he can’t defend his colleague on an unrelated private message board? The chilling effect of such a policy essentially means that all advocacy groups must be led by slick marketing politicians, always on-point and on-brand, even if off camera.
  - zorpner 7y ago
    This is a clear slippery slope fallacy. In this particular instance, all they had to do was not defend pedophiles, blame victims, and repeatedly engage in misogynistic behavior which literally drove women out of their discipline for decades.
  - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
    "an unrelated private message board?" Was this an unrelated private message board? I was under the impression it was on a mailing list at MIT.
    - ryeights 7y ago
      The list is semi-private, CSAIL-affiliated students and faculty only
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
        So not a private message board?
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    If he’s defending his colleague having sex with a 17 year old who had been trafficked for sex since she was 15, then yes I don’t think any president of an organization should do that.
    - wander_homer 7y ago
      His entire argument was that it was possible that he had no idea that she was a trafficking victim when she approached him, it could have been a regular prostitute from his point of view. However Stallman didn't downplay the harm that's been done to the girl and he didn't rule out the possibility that his friend indeed knew about all of that.
    - 7y ago
- zaphirplane 7y ago
  you are wording the sentences to create a vague wrong impression Of what transpired Be specific about what he said that you find abhorrent This topic is uncomfortable and a lot of people stay out of it or strongly self censor. he didn’t.
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    > This topic is uncomfortable and a lot of people stay out of it or strongly self censor. he didn’t. This is my point. As the president of an organization it’s not your job to make people uncomfortable about things that have nothing to do with that organization’s goals. Debating what is and is not statutory rape is not a discussion that should take place in any professional or technical environment. This instance is actually even worse than just debating something in the inappropriate context. Epstein is a huge scandal. He raped dozens if not hundreds of girls. He loaned them out to other powerful people. It is within this context that RMS’ statements are most damning. He’s wading in some very murky ethical waters and it should be no surprise he caught a backlash.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
      > As the president of an organization it’s not your job to make people uncomfortable about things that have nothing to do with that organization’s goals. Did anyone claim it was his job? > Debating what is and is not statutory rape is not a discussion that should take place in any professional or technical environment. Why? > This instance is actually even worse than just debating something in the inappropriate context. Epstein is a huge scandal. He raped dozens if not hundreds of girls. He loaned them out to other powerful people. It is within this context that RMS’ statements are most damning. Why is that? Does the fact that someone commits a crime make it inappropriate to defend people associated with them against incorrect accusations? How do you square that with the rule of law? > He’s wading in some very murky ethical waters and it should be no surprise he caught a backlash. He also should not be surprised that he gets a lot of opposition for promoting free software ... so, supposedly, he should not promote free software either?
    - zaphirplane 7y ago
new_realist 7y ago
OSS predates Stallman, and will outlast him. His contributions are overstated, as is the benefit of Free Software, generally, as compared to more permissive licenses.
- flippinburgers 7y ago
  Free Software is transparent science. I don't see how you could argue that the benefit is overstated. Ideas are built on one another and that is precisely how advancements are made. What he pushes for is extremely important.
- msla 7y ago
  > His contributions are overstated, as is the benefit of Free Software, generally, as compared to more permissive licenses. That's certainly what companies which made their fortunes out of taking software out of the commons and turning it into products want people to think. Enough programmers don't want to be turned into unpaid employees that copyleft licenses have substantial uptake. Also: > OSS predates Stallman, and will outlast him. ... refusing to see a distinction between OSS and Free Software? Neat rhetorical trick.
  - msla 7y ago
    The downvotes without replies are proof I've hit a nerve, and am saying things others cannot stand because they cannot refute them.
- mistrial9 7y ago
  I met with Stallman once, in a room of two dozen people, around Stanford in 1987 or so .. I can tell you the "OSS" or whatnot you are referring to, existed in a very different world then. Stallman had a twenty minute talk, which was a strict and tightly worded explanation of the significance and reasoning behind his proposals. It was very much the utter opposite of a two line throw-away judge-and-jury declaration of conclusion, as seen above.
- garmaine 7y ago
  The term “open source software” was invented by Christine Peterson in 1998 (edit: thanks!) to distinguish from GPL-style free software. Open source (inclusive of both) never really had any traction outside a few limited domains until the GNU project.
ariabuckles 7y ago
It wasn't just this incident. RMS alienated so many women from open source and free software over the last 30 years, and we've lost all of those potential contributions. He's been getting breaks for 30 years. That he has also done some very good things isn't a good argument for continuing to tolerate his harmful behaviour after he's been asked to fix it for literally decades, and hasn't.
- sprafa 7y ago
  Didn’t know about this. Where can I read more about his behaviour around women?
  - ariabuckles 7y ago
    https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman and https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-a-a7e41e784f88 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix... are good starting points; I also saw threads about it from women MIT alumns on twitter.
    - norcalli 7y ago
      It would be horrifying to have meticulously documented notes on every thing you ever said that may or may not be true, and may or may not have been a joke. If his career had been a comedian and not a FOSS advocate, then would he still be crucified for saying the same things or would he simply be an awful comedian? I would be dollars to doughnuts that the author of that site and the editors of that "wiki" have made or thought worse things at some point, but because they have not reached a certain level of celebrity, there's no dossier on them. It's truly ridiculous to me the amount of effort spent on trying to claw others down. I accept that inequality exists and perhaps RMS has some awful opinions, but if that's the case then just ignore him. If there are people who are choosing to make it incumbent upon themselves to take down these "problematic" individuals, then it must be because they think that all of the systems that have allowed a person to continue to exist despite those opinions must be unreliable in adequately judging them. If that's the case, then wouldn't it be more practical to fix the endemic problem rather than destroy a single person? I'm guessing that the latter is just easier to do and more profitable as well. You gain "credibility" by attacking someone else, so it's difficult to believe that they are doing it for altruistic means. All in all, I'm pretty sick of this nonsense. A world where everyone is constantly being watched by eachother and reported on is already too authoritarian for me to want to continue living in, not to mention the already authoritarian governments doing the same.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
htns 7y ago
Yeah, I wouldn't put anything under a "GPL or any later version" for the time being.
- harry8 7y ago
  Writing anyone or any organisation a blank cheque is problematic. Even if they are perfection personified now, will they be in the future? Will it be run by none of the same people? Will they have an entirely different agenda to the one you agree with? If you can't know these things with sufficient certainty, definitely pick your license. Then only change it deliberately for your own purposes with your own goals and ideals driving it. Devils advocate: maybe gpl will never have a later version you could possibly disagree with as it's too important to too many people just like you.
knolax 7y ago
I saw a tweet on Mastodon that claimed Git was a "major barrier for people of color" or some other nonsense. Meritocracy is dying here.
- pzone 7y ago
  That kind of talk always seems downright racist to me.
hinkley 7y ago
Until the latest stink I wasn't even aware that RMS still had a platform. I haven't heard from him in probably 15 years. That may be a good thing. FSF isn't about Richard Stallman. And some of the "kids" that ran him out of town know to keep plants at their desks because it turns out he's kind of a creep around young women, and also afraid of plants. None of that information has anything to do with mailing lists. There is always some reason that gets people to deal with a problem and that reason is often objectively kinda shitty. People overlook it because the problem is finally being addressed. One of the things that's going on in the current political climate is that it's no longer enough to be a great developer but a horrible human being. Development in the 90's was punctuated by some truly titanic man-children that everyone had to 'put up with' because they were just so good at the rest of their job. Gates seems to have grown up (I'm curious what Ballmer has been up to). Jobs, god bless him, died of his own stubbornness. They keep Ellison out of the spotlight, as they seem to have done with Stallman. Until he retires that leaves Torvalds (who I hope outlasts Ellison). I am sure there were points in my life where I could be painted with that brush, and I can say with a bit of authority that we don't need that kind of behavior. And if behavior is tolerated at the top then it's effectively tolerated everywhere.
- concordDance 7y ago
  > There is always some reason that gets people to deal with a problem and that reason is often objectively kinda shitty The problem is that that reason is the one people think is the reason the problem got dealt with. It has a nasty chilling effect.
- craigsmansion 7y ago
  > and also afraid of plants from someone who actually worked with him: "p.s.: In the closet-sized "office" Bushnell, McGrath, and I shared for a time we did have some spider plants as part of a running silly joke. They did not actually scare RMS away OF COURSE" https://archive.is/7qepC https://archive.is/7qepC

sn41 7y ago

In the years to come, I believe free software will be recognised as one of the paradigmatic changes in how science itself is done. Now chemists and biologists have started talking about making data openly available and so forth. It's a shame that RMS has to spout forth on every issue, and in the current climate of outrage, science may have lost an important transformational voice. I think as a society, we need to calm down a bit. We should not blacklist people merely based on opinions. We are one step away from thoughtcrime, and need to step back.

Frondo 7y ago
The complaints about stallman aren't a matter of thoughtcrime, they're a matter of entirely inappropriate behavior, not just once but repeatedly, over the course of decades. This was the one that disturbed me the most: "Going to an RMS talk in the early 90s and meeting with him in person was among the worst of my experienced - I was fifteen, still obviously underage, and skipping gym class to hear him speak at a professional conference (that I'd snuck into). He actually pointed to me in the back and proclaimed, into the mic, "A GIRL!" causing the audience to turn and look. Mortifying. Then he proceeded to gesture toward me every time he referred to "EMACS Virgins." (I cannot believe that he is still doing the same talk 10+ years later.) I was young and terrified of calling out someone that I'd previously idolized." Did he commit a crime? No. Should we overlook it, and should he remain in a leadership position at a prestigious organization? I can't imagine so; what kind of message does that send? Anecdote from: https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Experiences https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Experiences
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  Wow. Terrible. Hope she wasn't put off computer science / IT by that.
- zapzupnz 7y ago
  > The complaints about stallman aren't a matter of thoughtcrime, they're a matter of entirely inappropriate behavior, not just once but repeatedly, over the course of decades Indeed. A lot of people leaping to his defence have only a very surface-level understanding of his past record and think the accusations are something new or recent. Nobody expects the people who change the world to be perfect, but it really doesn't do to defend people based purely on their reputation. It's unjust to let influential people off the hook just because they're influential. Please note: I'm not pronouncing any opinion on whether his condemnation and dismissal are justified.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

The free software movement campaigns for freedom for the users of computing; it is a movement for freedom and justice. By contrast, the open source idea values mainly practical advantage and does not campaign for principles. If you read through more of the article, it becomes clear that the difference in viewpoint has actual real world impact on the type of licensing practices that result. Promoting a particular principle or ethos matters because it is like the DNA of the idea. Different DNA gets you completely different results.

scarejunba 7y ago

There's also the beauty in the point of Free Software: it's for freedom. This means it's okay that others profit. It's about you having power. That means you have the power to profit too. All you gotta share is the code for what you distribute. I like free software not because no one is making money. I like people making money. I like it because I can change it. That's important and everyone who gets upset simply because people profit is not necessarily on the same side as me. I don't want communist shared ownership of all things. I want the power to modify and run my software. That's all. It is actually like free speech. I want it for those who aren't like me and those are who like me.

quickthrower2 7y ago
What I could never get my head around when reading about free software is how can people, especially individuals or small companies make money making free software. Sure you can sell it but then the buyer is free to sell it for half the price. One way is if the software is a marketing tool for selling something else. Then people sharing or using it is good for marketing the other service. Another way is if the product is useless to the customer base in source form so they need to buy the compiled version, and aren’t technical enough to do it themselves. But in general making software to sell needs a propitery license if you want to make money.
- garmaine 7y ago
  Red Hat...
  - eesmith 7y ago
    Pretty much every other company which has tried that model has failed.
- madacoo 7y ago
  https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite This software uses a license that seems to solve both the problem of ensuring the user has control over the software and also allowing the author to sell and distribute binaries without worrying (too much) about others undermining his control over the market. It appears to work quite well in this case. Although I do not know how much he actually makes from software sales, it appears to be non-negligible based on its popularity within a niche community and the fact most users would rather pay $15 than learn the skills necessary to compile from source.

cindy8559 7y ago

I usually calculate here gpa calculator:, you try it https://gpa-calculator.online https://gpa-calculator.online

moron4hire 7y ago

To start, let me say that I believe in Free (libre) Software, as it is defined by the Software Freedoms. People should have the right to run the software they have, as they themselves see fit. That said, there is a lot wrong with open source and free software right now. First, and I think foremost, is that we’ve done ourselves a huge disservice in training users into believing that software should be gratis. Through the surveillance-driven ad economy for services, to FOSS adherents who insist they won’t pay for software, to smartphone app stores making it impossible to differentiate between products (and also, making it impossible to make a good product). Few people are willing to pay for software anymore (especially developers for development tools). This leaves software development to the privileged few who can afford to work for free, either because they work at a company that sees software as a loss-leader for some ad-economy service, or because they are financially independent. I cannot imagine how one might be able to replicate the 80s and 90s market where you could do hard work, make a great, common product like a word processor or an email client, and consumers would rejoice instead of snarl, “what do you mean you want money for this?” This consolidates power in the hands of Google, Microsoft, or worse, Oracle. Second, we have grown complacent and too accepting of crap. A lot of gratis software has very little polish (unless it’s being pushed by FAANG). People don’t want to pay for software because they rightly expect to have to try a dozen different packages before they find one that marginally works. Not getting paid means developers don’t have time to put into polish, nor any non-vanity signal to work on anything but neat features. With that, I think comes the ability for any actor of means to easily displace any smaller actor in the market. When a buyout happens, they don’t do it to acquire the technology anymore, they do it to acquire the users. We’ve raced ourselves to the bottom, so the only products we can afford to make are easily replicable by a 10x larger team. Or they don’t even have to replicate it, they just have to dump into marketing the kind of money that would setup any individual one of us for a nice, healthy, “fuck you” lifestyle. Third, because we haven’t fought “free software does not mean gratis”, companies demand software be permissively licensed or they won’t touch it. So they get to take your work and never pay you and it’s legal. You could GPL license instead and just get ignored, still not getting paid. You get to prove out the market for them, and then they copy your features, release under MIT, and don’t give a shit that they aren’t making money on it, because the only software they make money on is the ad seller console. I think we need to do several things: 1) grow a spine and a conscience, finally admit that there is no such thing as technology divorced from politics (it8s made for people, by people. Without people, it’s masturbation at best), and refuse to work for Google and Facebook, selling out our fellow citizens for a few bags of silver. 2) stop publicly publishing source code. The GPL doesn’t say you have to leave your source lying around in the open. It says you have to give it to your users. That’s fine. Users need lovin’ too, they just gotta pay first. 3) start taking a little more pride in our craft than, “I made a thing”. Software isn’t done until it is documented. It isn’t done until it’s usable without having to install Node and Python, just to run the setup. It isn’t done until it’s compliant with ADA and 508. With pride comes an expectation of remuneration. 4) stop “bucket of crabs”ing our fellow developers. If you don’t like something about a project, that is fine. But don’t call into question their fundamental right to exist. Too often I’ve seen projects cut down because they were “reinventing the wheel” or “just a solo dev”. Reinvention is important, or we wouldn’t have electric cars or faster computers or really anything. And solo devs wouldn’t be solo if you took them seriously and at least tried to put as much effort into supporting them as you put into cutting down their work. Realistically, I know this isn’t enough. But it can at least be a start. We can’t keep going on like this.

michannne 7y ago

It seems this thread and others like it has fueled a controversial honeypot, as some users are mass-downvoting comments that are perfectly in line with the content posted, simply because they stand for or against ousting Stallman, and others are doing the opposite -- mass upvoting comments that align with their predisposed view of the situation. I'd like to take sometime however to reiterate that freedom applies to all views. The ability of a user to use software regardless of their personal beliefs or background, what they want to use it for, or against. The choice of usage is completely and wholly up to the user, they may modify it to their heart's content, and the community can use those modifications freely for their purposes. Restricting viewpoints you don't align with is completely antithetical to the purpose of having free-as-in-speech software, and it is truly a shame, regardless of how you interpret the situation, that the poster-boy for these ideals has fallen from his position due to alternate views.

malvosenior 7y ago
As you can see in this thread and everywhere else it’s been recently discussed, Stallnan’s actions have detracted from his message. Now we talk about pedophilia because that’s what RMS introduced to an environment that should be discussing free software. He failed his own message by doing that. No one else is to blame.
- linuxftw 7y ago
  > Stallnan’s actions have detracted from his message. Now we talk about pedophilia because that’s what RMS introduced to an environment that should be discussing free software Do you have an original source, or are you just parroting what you heard in the media?
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    Yes I’ve read the original email thread.
    - linuxftw 7y ago

bbanyc 7y ago

If RMS had given 1/1000 the consideration to women's feelings as he did to internecine disputes within the FOSS community, he might still have his job today.

lostjohnny 7y ago
you deserve your "fuck you" You came looking for it.

marknadal 7y ago

RMS misses the point of Open Source.

jheriko 7y ago

I still struggle to appreciate the merits of the (L)GPL's definition of free... MIT license all the way. It doesn't make me pay through the nose to be 'free' by following some arbitrary rules from elsewhere to fit into something I can only realistically see as a 'club'.

knocte 7y ago
That's because you're seeing the results of the license from the perspective of the developer, not the user.
- millstone 7y ago
  For a user who is not a software developer, what is the practical difference between GPL and MIT? Is there one?
  - diffeomorphism 7y ago
    > For a user who is not a software developer, For a reader who is not a journalist, what is the value of free speech? Is there one?
    - andrerm 7y ago
      The day a journalist loses free speech is the day a reader loses it too. So the value is the same for both.
      - diffeomorphism 7y ago
        I am not sure I understand the point you are trying to make. Both losing it at the same time does not say anything about the value? Devil's advocate: The journalist loses his job and livelihood. I had nothing to say anyways. Clearly to him it had much more value. I obviously agree that free speech is valuable for everyone (and so is free software), but how do you best explain why?
  - 7y ago

raneraiskari69 7y ago

"Geekfeminism" :D Can we leave cuck-leftist faggot "sources" out of the conversation.

ngcc_hk 7y ago

With just free software concept, it goes nowhere. Once have open source inclusive of free software, it explodes. You need innovation even in licensing. One man is just one human. Humanity is much larger then one man abd one sex. Walk on.

mindcrime 7y ago

I don't think Open Source "misses the point" of Free Software at all. I think both the Free Software movement and the Open Source movement are making different - albeit highly related - points. And the same goes for some of the other "Open X" movements" like the "Open Data" movement, "Open Science", "Open Culture", and so on. There's an inherent commonality at a certain level of abstraction, but each of these "things" is still independent in a sense. That said, I think it would be better to focus on where these various initiatives are aligned, and focus on how to work together to maximize the strengths of these various communities, as opposed to focusing on where they differ, and engaging in petty bickering. Of course there will be hard-liners who will reject this, and I can understand and appreciate a measure of that. I'm a bit of the same way when it comes to my radical anarcho-capitalist / libertarian political beliefs. I'm open to a certain measure of collaboration with others in the name of "any progress is better than no progress" and "don't let the perfect be the enemy of good enough", but there are principles that I'm unwilling to compromise on.

salawat 7y ago

Just wanted to drop a Cliff Notes of the RMS controversy. Specifically, Stallman has been accused of (1) Defending Jeffrey Epstein (while in reality Stallman was defending Marvin Minsky); (2) Describing Epstein's victims as entirely willing (while in reality Stallman was arguing that one specific victim of Epstein, Virginia Giuffre, was presented to Minsky as entirely willing because she was coerced by Epstein, not that she was entirely willing); (3) Defendinf pedophilia (while in reality Stallman was arguing that age doesn't matter in a case of rape because rape is always a terrible act no matter the age of the victim); (4) Defending pedophilia in the past (while in reality Stallman already countered his controversial claim from 2006 -in which he expressed skepticism in case of consensual sex- with a comment in 2013, where he said that children can't really be consensual); (5) Condoned sexual assault (while in reality Stallman was arguing that the term "sexual assault" does not fit the description of Minsky's act towards Virginia Giuffre since she wasn't assaulted by Minsky but coerced by Epstein; Stallman also added that the term is generally too vague as it refers to bad acts that can range from harmful to very harmful, and that the term usually makes readers think of the worst case); (6) Implying that the victim wasn't harmed (while in reality Stallman explicitly claimed that she was harmed); (7) Making comments that are excuses about rape, assault and child sex trafficking (while he condemned all three as explained above); (8) Used to keep a mattress in his MIT office, implying sexual activity and/or macho behavior at work (while in reality Stallman is known to have lived in his office for a certain period of his life). As a consequence of these writings, Stallman resigned from his position at MIT and also from his position at the Free Software Foundation. Sources in chronological order: September 12 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec210794 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21... September 13 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-described-epstein-victims-as-entirely-willing https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-sci... https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929/09132019142056-0001.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929/091320191... https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-defends-epstein-victims-were-entirely-willing https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-r... September 14 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September_2019_(Statements_about_Epstein) https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_Septe... Septembet 16 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-a-a7e41e784f88 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix... https://blog.halon.org.uk/2019/09/gnome-foundation-relationship-gnu-fsf/ https://blog.halon.org.uk/2019/09/gnome-foundation-relations... https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/sep/16/rms-does-not-speak-for-us/ https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/sep/16/rms-does-not-spea... https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#16_September_2019_(Resignation) https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#16_September... https://www.fsf.org/news/richard-m-stallman-resigns https://www.fsf.org/news/richard-m-stallman-resigns OTHER REFERENCES Stallman on his home https://stallman.org/rms-lifestyle.html https://stallman.org/rms-lifestyle.html Stallman on Pedophilia, 2006 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20June%202006%20%28Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party%29 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20Jun... Stallman on pedophilia, part deuce, 2013 https://stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_January_2013_%28Pedophilia%29 https://stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_January_2... There is a petition floating around for journalists to own up and post a retraction (not that anyone is expecting miracles), but if you're against having the Press straight up spreading lies, consider offering a signature. https://www.change.org/p/journalists-to-stop-the-persecution-of-stallman-and-apologize-publicly?recruiter=1005025247&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition https://www.change.org/p/journalists-to-stop-the-persecution... I leave it to every individuals conscience to make of it what they will... I just know that to me, this entire thing stinks to high heaven. I cannot see any way in which any of this boondoggle can be remotely said to have happened in good faith. Spread the word, or just at least make your decision on the most accurate information possible. For me, Free Software comes first, but a bit of journalistic integrity is also a primary concern. If journalists and these "cancel culture" are willing to go after the figurehead of the movement, and defile the primary values of the movement by twisting every detail imaginable, There is no real telling where things will stop. I'm not one to usually get fired up over this sort of thing, but I do insist that some semblance of integrity be maintained when trying to challenge something. If you have a good case, then it will see you through to the end. If you have to cheat and lie to get what you want, it stands to reason that the ground you are arguing from May not have been that solid in the first place. In the interests of keeping the "Free" in "Free Software" as good as the "Free" in "Free Beer"; please, raise awareness, and keep up the fight against disinformation. Thank you.

kyancey 7y ago

Every time I read stuff like this, I think it's the free software people who miss the point of open source.

jimmaswell 7y ago

Free software misses the point of open source. Open source wants to make the world a better place without strings attached, while free software just wants to push some bizzare ideology.

adtac 7y ago
Not bizarre in absolutely any way. The free software movement is a real thing that lobbies for you and me. Unlike silicon valley products, GPL and its siblings actually made the world a better place and to not recognise it is to be ungrateful. Even if making all software free is a dystopia, it's a good dystopia to strive towards.
- jimmaswell 7y ago
  I could have gone my whole life without politically charged GPL utilities like gcc but Uber and AirBnB have been very useful to me.
arnoooooo 7y ago
Except nothing is "without strings attached" in life. To me "making the world a better place" is precisely about recognizing that everything is interdependent and setting up the right "strings", not about pretending we can live without them.
- jimmaswell 7y ago
  The strategy doesn't even seem to really work. GPL stuff is generally just avoided and rewritten. So all you accomplished licensing with GPL was wasting worldwide developer time out of spite. Who knows if that wasted dev time might have cured cancer or something.
diffeomorphism 7y ago
Democracy misses the point of anarchy. Anarchy wants freedom without strings attached, while democracy puts limits. Technically true, but "you don't get to take away other's freedom" to me seems an entirely sensible restriction and not at all "bizarre".

jokoon 7y ago

I would really be interested in an explanation of why driver issues persist on linux, or at least why there were so many issues. Do vendors have financial preference to work with microsoft to write and maintain those drivers? I'm talking about things like touchpads, wifi... I can understand that if there's no demand, it makes no point for them, but even after all this time? Not to mention nvidia. What makes nvidia be so complacent towards linux? It has been almost 15 years now. Are there agreements between microsoft and nvidia? The arguments of Stallman make sense, but to me they don't explain the state of linux drivers, which made the linux desktop so difficult.

msiyer 7y ago

the problem we are discussing in this thread can be rephrased as - do i own my thoughts? only when we have an answer to this question can we properly progress as a society. else, we will keep expending resources to keep these debates alive.

2rsf 7y ago

Yesterday I have listened to the Hebrew version of this podcast, interesting and relevant: https://www.cmpod.net/all-transcripts/history-open-source-free-software-text/ https://www.cmpod.net/all-transcripts/history-open-source-fr...

rimliu 7y ago

FSF misses the point entirely. It operates on the assumptions of the long-gone world where every software uses was also a programmer. It used to be that way, but it will never be that way again. Nor should it.

ghaff 7y ago

Interestingly, one of the latest contretemps on Twitter etc. Lis the desire by some for open source licenses that restrict usage by purpose or organization. For example, ICE, military, law enforcement, etc. A much longer discussion obviously but an example where user freedoms more or less are counter to developers being able to restrict what their software gets used for once it’s been released as open source.

Avamander 7y ago
To be fair, if free software can restrict it's redistribution in closed devices, why not in cases where the use restricts user freedoms one step more indirectly?
- ghaff 7y ago
  Also to be fair, that was a pretty controversial clause in GPLv3 and ended up getting largely de-fanged before the license was finalized. It’s not obvious to me that workable usage restrictions should automatically be off the table however.
  - Avamander 7y ago
    The Tivoization clause is good in my opinion, however it is now clear that OEMs would rather not implement a feature than not lock their boxes. In a way it's a success, no GPLv3 software will violate your user rights .-.

lbj 7y ago

What I fundamentally dislike about RMS' philosophy and the licenses its inspired, is that it values a developers time as nothing. As if the world has some fundamental right to everything that rolls out of my head.

Avamander 7y ago
How does it value that time as nothing?
- lbj 7y ago
  If you invent a great piece of software, you need to be paid for the time you put into making it. If your only play is a license deal or such, open source will kill your business. Or turn it into something that RMS agrees with. But it wont be "your" business.
  - Avamander 7y ago
    But noone is forcing you to make software libre, with or without asking money for it.
    - lbj 7y ago
      Thankfully no force. Its just his philosophy
      - Avamander 7y ago
        No, his philosophy doesn't suggest that either.
      - orangeshark 7y ago
        You can sell your free software, RMS even encourages it. The reason a lot of the software is gratis is to lower the barrier to use and spread the software. This makes sense if you want to quickly spread an operating system composed of free software. Unfortunately that has become the default for most free and open source software, even for many proprietary software these days.

Myrmornis 7y ago

> we mean that it respects the users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes With open source but not "free" (sensu Stallman) software, one is free to run it and study it and change it, right? Since one has read permissions on the code. So the only difference is in distribution rights? So his sentence is misleading regarding the extent of the differences?

olalonde 7y ago
> So the only difference is in distribution rights? So his sentence is misleading regarding the extent of the differences? Yes, it's misleading. There's no practical difference between the two in terms of licensing. What this boils down to is that not all open source developers subscribe to the free software philosophy (e.g. believe that proprietary software is evil). Therefore, rms doesn't like the term.
- Myrmornis 7y ago
  > There's no practical difference between the two in terms of licensing. Isn't it the case that (a) there could be / are open source projects with extremely restrictive licensing which totally prevents all distribution. I.e. a "copyright": you can still read and run the software and modify it for yourself, as long as you don't distribute it, and (b) such a project could never be "free" sensu Stallman?
  - olalonde 7y ago
    No, licensing that prevents distribution would disqualify it as "open source" software.
orangeshark 7y ago
Free software and open source software cover basically the same software. The main difference is that these communities value different parts of the software. Free Software supporters value the freedom aspects of the software, while Open Source Software supporters value the development practices to create powerful and reliable software. If you listen to these supporters on the benefits of releasing your software as Free and Open Source, you will hear completely different reasons why.

lostjohnny 7y ago

There a TL;DR; on the bottom. I'm very sympathetic with people (over)reacting to what Stallman said and did. I'm from a family where my parents and most of my uncles worked in healthcare. Specifically my dad worked in oncology and my mom in infectiuos diseases. I've seen patient's relatives panic because of some blood (after a very dangerous surgery) or complaining to the management because some other patient had sever pain and they could not stand them crying. People are tribal, they usually act as a tribe, if not educated differently or introduced to things they do not know. Of course I don't have to explain than when some of my friends needed to go to an hospital I was always regarded as the unemphatetic for saying things like "some blood is normal at this stage" or "the pain is gonna go away soon, don't worry" or "well, they amputated that man's leg, I bet I would be crying too. You can't complain about that" (this one really happened to me, when I had surgery to remove the saphenous vein, one of my parents friend came over to visit and asked me "why your parents keep you here with that man crying all the time?", I must specify that in Italy healthcare is mainly public, it was even more 25 years ago, you don't find the private hotel like rooms, and it worked much better than today, but that's another story). SJWs are the same: they only think about their group, their needs, their right words, without stopping to think for a moment that Stallman started 40 years ago and that for 40 years he resisted, you don't just throw him under the bus because he said something you don't like because you were never exposed to that kind of thinking. But Stallman would have defended their right to speak their minds if the role were reversed. And that's why I'm sympathetic with them because they don't even understand the damage they made to themselves. TL;DR; We should work together engaging in what makes us similar more than what makes us different. That's what Stallman did. Exactly 80 years ago Sigmund Freud died. > The narcissism of small differences (German: der Narzissmus der kleinen Differenzen) is the thesis that communities with adjoining territories and close relationships are especially likely to engage in feuds and mutual ridicule because of hypersensitivity to details of differentiation. The term was coined by Sigmund Freud in 1917, based on the earlier work of British anthropologist Ernest Crawley. In language differing only slightly from current psychoanalytic terminology, Crawley declared that each individual is separated from others by a taboo of personal isolation, a narcissism of minor differences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...

blobs 7y ago

'as free speech, not as free beer', to explain what is actually meant with 'free software' doesn't cut it for me. Why not just call it open source and pick the license you prefer? With all respect for Richard Stallman, the label 'free software' is a really poor word choice IMAO.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Precisely because of what RMS keeps saying - the thing is about software freedom, not software price. Software freedoms and Free Software came first. "Open Source" came later, as a "free just as in beer" spin-off.
- blobs 7y ago
  It's not that I don't understand it, it's just very confusing for anyone hearing that for the first time. Is it freeware? No, it's like free speech not free beer. Come on, we can do better.
  - diffeomorphism 7y ago
    Most languages other than English do better. If English is not your native language "free speech" is also a confusing phrase.

tomxor 7y ago

> “Free software.” “Open source.” If it's the same software (or nearly so), does it matter which name you use? Yes, because different words convey different ideas. Even though i support FOSS over OSS, I've always found this particular argument a bit uselessly pedantic. Both of these term are almost always used casually not legally, when we want to do that (i.e when releasing software) we must use the highly specific language of a particular license anyway... which leaves only the following argument: > establishing freedom in a lasting way depends above all on teaching people to value freedom. For non-enterprise uses, how much OSS is not also FOSS? most people assume they are equal because the free part is implied, so do we really need to teach it? most software vendors understand this because they know the majority of people will just use it for free if the source is available regardless of whether it is explicitly given as free. It's too hard to enforce payment in any area except for enterprise... When this market force already exists, does it really help to create a social force to differentiate FOSS from OSS? I'm not sure, I think you just end up pissing off new FOSS enthusiasts.