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Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for this very reason. You might think it's ridiculous but the fight for the right to modify the sof

Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for this very reason. You might think it's ridiculous but the fight for the right to modify the software running on devices you own has been raging for 35 years and is bigger than ever.

bsaul 6y ago
It hasn’t been a quarter in which i haven’t told myself how richard stallman was right, and a visionary, and how much we were fools to consider him an extremist.
- beering 6y ago
  And many of the things that we thought he was pointlessly complaining about, instead grew into big issues a few years later affecting all of us.
  - romanoderoma 6y ago
    That's why he was kicked out by people the like of Garreth who named him "enemy of the FSF" and mocked him on Twitter calling Stallman "bad" but he's a former Google employee...
- ngngngng 6y ago
  Sometimes he's off his rocker, but a lot of the time he's right. We can have both.
  - gerbler 6y ago
    I was riding my bicycle and stopped for Stallman at a pedestrian crossing; he grunted positively in my general direction.
- dreamcompiler 6y ago
  Stallman is a difficult person to like and he is wrong about many things, but not about this, the central issue of his career.
  - Waterfall 6y ago
    What do you find him wrong about?
    - cool_dude85 6y ago
      The detritus between your toes is not, in fact, a tasty treat.
      - Waterfall 6y ago
        Maybe you haven't had the full emulsified flavor of the Sweet Stallman Skin Sap. It's better than usual toe jams from other free software activists.
        Ericson2314 6y ago
        https://www.cbsnews.com/news/scientists-create-toe-belly-button-cheese-from-human-bacteria/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/scientists-create-toe-belly-but... Stallamn should sell some Camembert.
    - VectorLock 6y ago
      His public image has been degraded from toe-jam eating and supposedly outrageous riders for speaking engagements (which I think everything in was pretty level headed but some people think it was 'nuts')
      - sciurus 6y ago
        For anyone who hasn't read the rider: https://github.com/ddol/rre-rms/blob/master/rider.txt https://github.com/ddol/rre-rms/blob/master/rider.txt
        cpeterso 6y ago
        > "GNU" is pronounced as one syllable with a hard g, like "grew" but with n instead of r. TIL I learned "GNU" is somehow pronounced with one syllable ("gnew") and not two ("guh-noo"). (I know lowercase "gnu" is pronounced with one syllable.)
- lolsal 6y ago
  He is an extremist and he is also a visionary.
fermienrico 6y ago
I am fine with this for most things except my phone. I trust Apple more than any party in the world. Even the government. Fortnight devs, Epic, whatever are not even on the same radar. They'll sell your privacy in milliseconds if they can get 2.5 cents for it. I would never ever own an open source phone. Not because the operating system is open source (probably good that it has eyes on it) but there is no way to control third-party apps. Even the os builds can get hacked and I cannot trust it. I have so much personal stuff on my phone on it that I cannot afford to entertain Richard Stallman and his righteousness.
- throwaw4y-plate 6y ago
  >I trust Apple more than any party in the world. That opinion is likely to be a bit of an outlier, heh.
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    I honestly do. Who would you trust more?
    - wizzwizz4 6y ago
      Myself. If not for IME, I could have a computer under my control, running software guaranteed to be free from the Trusting Trust attack, right now.
      - fermienrico 6y ago
        I respectfully disagree in my case. I don't consider myself a security expert at anything, especially at computers. This is probably 99.999% of the Apple customers. People like yourself can probably manage their own security, have a secure NAS, multiple firewalls, etc. Do you see it from the perspective of average Joe (or me)?
        ptx 6y ago
        I trust Debian to supply and maintain the software on my machine. But, at any moment, I can choose to add other trusted parties, or remove the Debian repositories, or add my own patched version of some app. I usually choose to trust them, because it's convenient and because they probably know better than I do. But my trust in Debian is completely voluntary, non-exclusive and revocable.
marcan_42 6y ago
Richard Stallman has been way off the rails and a detriment to his own cause for years. I'm not talking about the pedophilia comments, the sexual harassment of women in tech, or the toe jam. All those are well documented and don't need restating. No, if you look at the FSF's recent policies regarding software freedom, they are also bass-ackwards. The FSF had a "respects your freedom" certification which is designed to encourage devices to be less free, thanks to a concession for blobs and proprietary firmware. Effectively, they know that it's impossible to build modern hardware without blobs, so instead what they did is require those blobs to be hidden, immutable, un-freeable, un-auditable. That way they can claim, for all the clueless free software evangelists, that the devices are 100% Free (because there are no closed blobs in /lib/firmware! They're just... elsewhere, where you can't see them, audit them, touch them, or actually replace them with a free version). I wrote up the story in this Twitter thread, it's crazy: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1040626210999431168 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1040626210999431168 Then there is also the AGPL, which isn't a Free Software license, but rather an end-user license agreement (EULA), because it violates Freedom Zero: the freedom to use software however you want. All free software licenses only impose restrictions on distribution, making them copyright licenses - you can use original or modified versions of e.g. GPLed software at will, with no condition, as long as you don't redistribute them to others. The AGPL requires advertising and offering source when used as a network server, which is a condition on usage, and thus incompatible with the Free Software definition. rms will never admit to this, but AGPL-licensed software is, by any reasonable reading of the Free Software definition, not Free Software, and shouldn't be included in the Debian main repository, for example. It's just that nobody seems to be able to read past the "AGPL is from the FSF so it must be free software" idea. These are just some ways in which the FSF and rms are hurting their own cause. If you want to support an organization, I would recommend the FSFe instead of the FSF. The European branch is actually doing good work for free software advocacy, instead of all the nonsense the FSF is doing which only makes the movement look worse.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  I think you have formed a rather negative opinion of rms without having ever met him or spoken with him. This is common in politics, so I don't blame you, but I don't think you're serving yourself or anyone else well.
totetsu 6y ago
Is this that thing, where someone posts something controversial that is bound to generate lots of discussion, to deflect and derail the discussion from the real topic at hand.

bsaul 6y ago

It hasn’t been a quarter in which i haven’t told myself how richard stallman was right, and a visionary, and how much we were fools to consider him an extremist.

beering 6y ago
And many of the things that we thought he was pointlessly complaining about, instead grew into big issues a few years later affecting all of us.
- romanoderoma 6y ago
  That's why he was kicked out by people the like of Garreth who named him "enemy of the FSF" and mocked him on Twitter calling Stallman "bad" but he's a former Google employee...
ngngngng 6y ago
Sometimes he's off his rocker, but a lot of the time he's right. We can have both.
- gerbler 6y ago
  I was riding my bicycle and stopped for Stallman at a pedestrian crossing; he grunted positively in my general direction.
dreamcompiler 6y ago
Stallman is a difficult person to like and he is wrong about many things, but not about this, the central issue of his career.
- Waterfall 6y ago
  What do you find him wrong about?
  - cool_dude85 6y ago
    The detritus between your toes is not, in fact, a tasty treat.
    - Waterfall 6y ago
      Maybe you haven't had the full emulsified flavor of the Sweet Stallman Skin Sap. It's better than usual toe jams from other free software activists.
      - Ericson2314 6y ago
        https://www.cbsnews.com/news/scientists-create-toe-belly-button-cheese-from-human-bacteria/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/scientists-create-toe-belly-but... Stallamn should sell some Camembert.
  - VectorLock 6y ago
    His public image has been degraded from toe-jam eating and supposedly outrageous riders for speaking engagements (which I think everything in was pretty level headed but some people think it was 'nuts')
    - sciurus 6y ago
      For anyone who hasn't read the rider: https://github.com/ddol/rre-rms/blob/master/rider.txt https://github.com/ddol/rre-rms/blob/master/rider.txt
      - cpeterso 6y ago
        > "GNU" is pronounced as one syllable with a hard g, like "grew" but with n instead of r. TIL I learned "GNU" is somehow pronounced with one syllable ("gnew") and not two ("guh-noo"). (I know lowercase "gnu" is pronounced with one syllable.)
lolsal 6y ago
He is an extremist and he is also a visionary.

fermienrico 6y ago

I am fine with this for most things except my phone. I trust Apple more than any party in the world. Even the government. Fortnight devs, Epic, whatever are not even on the same radar. They'll sell your privacy in milliseconds if they can get 2.5 cents for it. I would never ever own an open source phone. Not because the operating system is open source (probably good that it has eyes on it) but there is no way to control third-party apps. Even the os builds can get hacked and I cannot trust it. I have so much personal stuff on my phone on it that I cannot afford to entertain Richard Stallman and his righteousness.

throwaw4y-plate 6y ago
>I trust Apple more than any party in the world. That opinion is likely to be a bit of an outlier, heh.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  I honestly do. Who would you trust more?
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    Myself. If not for IME, I could have a computer under my control, running software guaranteed to be free from the Trusting Trust attack, right now.
    - fermienrico 6y ago
      I respectfully disagree in my case. I don't consider myself a security expert at anything, especially at computers. This is probably 99.999% of the Apple customers. People like yourself can probably manage their own security, have a secure NAS, multiple firewalls, etc. Do you see it from the perspective of average Joe (or me)?
      - ptx 6y ago
        I trust Debian to supply and maintain the software on my machine. But, at any moment, I can choose to add other trusted parties, or remove the Debian repositories, or add my own patched version of some app. I usually choose to trust them, because it's convenient and because they probably know better than I do. But my trust in Debian is completely voluntary, non-exclusive and revocable.

marcan_42 6y ago

Richard Stallman has been way off the rails and a detriment to his own cause for years. I'm not talking about the pedophilia comments, the sexual harassment of women in tech, or the toe jam. All those are well documented and don't need restating. No, if you look at the FSF's recent policies regarding software freedom, they are also bass-ackwards. The FSF had a "respects your freedom" certification which is designed to encourage devices to be less free, thanks to a concession for blobs and proprietary firmware. Effectively, they know that it's impossible to build modern hardware without blobs, so instead what they did is require those blobs to be hidden, immutable, un-freeable, un-auditable. That way they can claim, for all the clueless free software evangelists, that the devices are 100% Free (because there are no closed blobs in /lib/firmware! They're just... elsewhere, where you can't see them, audit them, touch them, or actually replace them with a free version). I wrote up the story in this Twitter thread, it's crazy: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1040626210999431168 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1040626210999431168 Then there is also the AGPL, which isn't a Free Software license, but rather an end-user license agreement (EULA), because it violates Freedom Zero: the freedom to use software however you want. All free software licenses only impose restrictions on distribution, making them copyright licenses - you can use original or modified versions of e.g. GPLed software at will, with no condition, as long as you don't redistribute them to others. The AGPL requires advertising and offering source when used as a network server, which is a condition on usage, and thus incompatible with the Free Software definition. rms will never admit to this, but AGPL-licensed software is, by any reasonable reading of the Free Software definition, not Free Software, and shouldn't be included in the Debian main repository, for example. It's just that nobody seems to be able to read past the "AGPL is from the FSF so it must be free software" idea. These are just some ways in which the FSF and rms are hurting their own cause. If you want to support an organization, I would recommend the FSFe instead of the FSF. The European branch is actually doing good work for free software advocacy, instead of all the nonsense the FSF is doing which only makes the movement look worse.

forgotmypw17 6y ago
I think you have formed a rather negative opinion of rms without having ever met him or spoken with him. This is common in politics, so I don't blame you, but I don't think you're serving yourself or anyone else well.

totetsu 6y ago

Is this that thing, where someone posts something controversial that is bound to generate lots of discussion, to deflect and derail the discussion from the real topic at hand.