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> one can still find plenty of people who will argue in favor of walled gardens and against general computing. What these people don't know is that we already

> one can still find plenty of people who will argue in favor of walled gardens and against general computing. What these people don't know is that we already had all of these arguments, 20+ years ago, on Usenet and Slashdot and a ton of mailing lists and it's all still there; every counter-argument, every riposte, every troll. The argument in favour of Free Software was won, philosophically, a while ago. The problem, of course, is actually getting the average Joe to understand what it means and what it implies; they have enough difficulty understanding what Free Speech really meant for them, and even now are willing participants in its dismantling. That said, the library of existing Free Software is phenomenal. For most people, almost anything you could possibly need has some incarnation in the vast libraries of GPL and copylefted software out there. It's not going away, and so far there's no sign of general purpose-ish computing going away; $50 Raspberry Pis have more compute than most machines from a decade ago and so it's a really good, really equalizing era in computing, for anyone willing to take the plunge. We need schools to start teaching kids Linux from a young age, I think.

zhte415 6y ago
> it's all still there; every counter-argument, every riposte, every troll. Is it? Logging into my old Slashdot account after several years of not bisiting /., early 6 digits, I found old posts removed.
- core-questions 6y ago
  You posted this just so you could brag about your account. I bet mine is older
the_af 6y ago
> The argument in favour of Free Software was won, philosophically, a while ago. This is what depresses me. It was won, like you said -- yet there's a new generation of tech-minded people, even here (or on stackoverflow, reddit and many other places), who are not Joe Averages and who don't acknowledge the matter is settled, who disregard the old arguments, and who will argue walled gardens and locked down hardware are good things. Surely you've seen this too. It's really disheartening, and probably part of the wider phenomenon of younger generations unwilling to learn and understand old battles and hard-won rights and lessons. To be clear: I don't mind people not knowing about the history of computing. Nobody is born knowing. But actively arguing for less freedom, freedom that was once part of hacker culture -- that hurts.
- core-questions 6y ago
  People don't understand what freedoms are until they see negative examples of them missing from their lives (or at least, portrayals of such).

zhte415 6y ago

> it's all still there; every counter-argument, every riposte, every troll. Is it? Logging into my old Slashdot account after several years of not bisiting /., early 6 digits, I found old posts removed.

core-questions 6y ago
You posted this just so you could brag about your account. I bet mine is older

the_af 6y ago

> The argument in favour of Free Software was won, philosophically, a while ago. This is what depresses me. It was won, like you said -- yet there's a new generation of tech-minded people, even here (or on stackoverflow, reddit and many other places), who are not Joe Averages and who don't acknowledge the matter is settled, who disregard the old arguments, and who will argue walled gardens and locked down hardware are good things. Surely you've seen this too. It's really disheartening, and probably part of the wider phenomenon of younger generations unwilling to learn and understand old battles and hard-won rights and lessons. To be clear: I don't mind people not knowing about the history of computing. Nobody is born knowing. But actively arguing for less freedom, freedom that was once part of hacker culture -- that hurts.

core-questions 6y ago
People don't understand what freedoms are until they see negative examples of them missing from their lives (or at least, portrayals of such).