4 ms·

A good time to thank Stallman for seeing all this coming and preparing way back in 1983. As far as I know he was the first person to kick off the open source OS

by city41 5y ago

A good time to thank Stallman for seeing all this coming and preparing way back in 1983. As far as I know he was the first person to kick off the open source OS effort, and of course quite a few people have helped over the decades.

sneak 5y ago
None of the OSes that Stallman suggests are acceptable are actually acceptable, though. No real way to build a skyscraper or produce a state of the art feature film on free software. Stallman was as wrong about just as much stuff as he was right. It turns out that a few hundred billion dollars of paid software engineering effort can't simply be waved away as "nonfree, so irrelevant". The whole world moved on to devices where not only is the software nonfree, there is not even an option of choosing free software, and, even if there were, there is no comparable free software to choose. Why? Because they work better and allow you to get more things done in less time.
- y4mi 5y ago
  Most of the apps on my phone are from f-droid so your premise is void. It's true that it's unreasonably hard to get a decent mobile device that's also free by his definition, but there definitely are free app choices which are often superior to their closed equivalent if you step outside of the apple ecosphere.
  - sneak 5y ago
    How about the baseband? How about the tools used to design the CPU? How about the firmware in the handheld scanner that the delivery person used to bring it to you?
    - HelixEndeavor 5y ago
      What's your point here? That corporations who don't have to worry about the costs of proprietary software can deploy such without concern?
- _Algernon_ 5y ago
  >Stallman was as wrong about just as much stuff as he was right. When it comes to predicting the future correctly, 50/50 is a pretty good track record IMHO.
  - sneak 5y ago
    The >=50% he was wrong about (I phrased it carefully, it could even be 99/1, as he has been Quite Seriously Wrong about many other things (how to lead FSF, how to communicate with the public, how to behave at conferences)) is likely of vastly greater importance than the few minor technical aspects he was right about. I'm on Team Free Software but I'm also on Team Productivity and it turns out that software engineering matters a lot to the latter and the quality and quantity of engineering effort put into free software is a tiny, tiny fraction of that put in to nonfree software. I doubt the right way to change this is by yelling at/chastising users and developers. If it were, Stallman would have been successful. As it appears, he's been mostly a failure.
- city41 5y ago
  Why does it have to be an either/or? Of course Stallman and a large group of volunteers can't compete with giant corporations. But their contributions are very valuable and needed. It also turns out that few hundred billion dollars of paid software engineering was greatly subsidized by volunteer open source work. Every Android phone in the world uses an open source kernel as one very obvious example. I for one am very grateful for Stallman and everyone else. I use Linux for everything. Works great, meets all of my needs with zero complaints. If it wasn't for them, I'd have no choice but to use Windows or MacOS.
  - sneak 5y ago
    > Of course Stallman and a large group of volunteers can't compete with giant corporations. If they (or their ideology) can't, then nothing else they say has any relevance. > But their contributions are very valuable and needed. How so? Decades of their braying has not solved the problem; indeed things have gotten much worse.
- arminiusreturns 5y ago
  What OS's RMS suggest are irrelevant to the gp's comment that RMS saw this slippery slope in computing coming long before most. > No real way to build a skyscraper or produce a state of the art feature film on free software. Yes, CAD software is a known issue in FOSS land, but you can still run them in wine on linux when you have to. It is getting better though, lots of consistent updates to some of the foss-cads. Blender on the other hand, is now often the backbone of the feature film industry. As a matter of fact a large portion of the industry is moving more and more towards at least OSS. (https://www.aswf.io/projects/ https://www.aswf.io/projects/) > The whole world moved on to devices where not only is the software nonfree This is a blanket statement and not true. What about the fact that foss generally runs the vast majority of the internet that allows those non-free devices to function? You've basically got a bunch of linux boxes at the edge of every residential network. Reminds of that time I got into an argument with the Guardians senior technical editor who tried to tell me linux was irrelevant... The supercomputing top 500 certainly doesn't reflect such claims, since you mentioned "state-of-the-art". > there is not even an option of choosing free software, and, even if there were, there is no comparable free software to choose. In the vast majority of the cases, there are plenty of FOSS alternatives to choose. > Why? Because they work better and allow you to get more things done in less time. Why? Because the school system got locked into to proprietary software when it shouldn't have and thats all they train people on for the most part. Not because of inherent issues in the software interface.
  - danudey 5y ago
    > Yes, CAD software is a known issue in FOSS land, but you can still run them in wine on linux when you have to. It is getting better though, lots of consistent updates to some of the foss-cads. And if you have any issue at all and need technical support, the company will say "That is not a supported configuration, sorry." and you're on your own. > This is a blanket statement and not true. What about the fact that foss generally runs the vast majority of the internet that allows those non-free devices to function? And non-free software runs the networking hardware that that internet runs over. > Because the school system got locked into to proprietary software when it shouldn't have and thats all they train people on for the most part. Because the school system trains people on what is actually being used, and not on what should, theoretically, be used, in a hypothetical scenario where everyone has weeks or months to relearn everything they know about computing (like how to install and use Linux, and then how to install and use Wine, and then how to install and use their proprietary business tools on Wine on Linux and solve any bugs that come up).
- mrmonkeyman 5y ago
  Feudal serf: without the master we would have nothing. Reality: a really tiny, almost microscopic group of free software enthousiasts have brought forth at least a couple of the best OSes the world will ever have, one of those being more successful than all others combined (Linux). There is more to computing than the desktop (and mobile). You have been lied to and will be lied to forever until you stop being a serf. Hard pill to swallow but no, proprietary bullshit "products" build by slaves don't hold a candle to anything produced by a group of skilled and competent enthousiasts not driven (and distracted) by morally repulsive and objectively suboptimal incentives.
- ravenstine 5y ago
  > No real way to build a skyscraper or produce a state of the art feature film on free software. I don't know much about building skyscrapers, but we neither need "state of the art feature film" nor are incapable of producing perfectly adequate film with the tools currently available as free software. There are also countless feature film and animation tools that run and are used on Linux all the time. Irrespective, I do actually think your viewpoint is valid generally speaking in that FOSS operating systems are inadequate for general purpose computing. They're great for servers or specific tooling, but they suck horse chestnuts if you just want something you can install whatever you want on them and just expect it to work as well as you can on something like macOS or Windows. Those who deny that usually are power users that don't see things from the perspective of the average person who isn't a software engineer or tinkerer. Of course, this is a failing of both the system and society itself. We ought to know better, but we are too lazy and too hooked on convenience to care enough.
  - boudin 5y ago
    That's far from being true. Installing software on Windows and Macos is a shitshow. Dealing with updates is such a pain that it built the habit of ignoring updates as much as possible by default. The only thing that made things a bit better for users with little technical knowledge is the fact that more things are done in the browser nowdays, and this is true for any operating system.
pjmlp 5y ago
Not really, the only reason why UNIX got widespread was because originally AT&T wasn't allowed to charge for it, and its source code was available for a symbolic price alongside the source code, which eventually lead to the UNIX V6 annotated book. Had AT&T been allowed to sell UNIX from the get go, Stallman would have had to base his endevours on something else. Then again, it doesn't matter given the amount of GPL-hate nowadays that everyone goes with business friendly licenses.

by city41 5y ago

sneak 5y ago

None of the OSes that Stallman suggests are acceptable are actually acceptable, though. No real way to build a skyscraper or produce a state of the art feature film on free software. Stallman was as wrong about just as much stuff as he was right. It turns out that a few hundred billion dollars of paid software engineering effort can't simply be waved away as "nonfree, so irrelevant". The whole world moved on to devices where not only is the software nonfree, there is not even an option of choosing free software, and, even if there were, there is no comparable free software to choose. Why? Because they work better and allow you to get more things done in less time.

y4mi 5y ago
Most of the apps on my phone are from f-droid so your premise is void. It's true that it's unreasonably hard to get a decent mobile device that's also free by his definition, but there definitely are free app choices which are often superior to their closed equivalent if you step outside of the apple ecosphere.
- sneak 5y ago
  How about the baseband? How about the tools used to design the CPU? How about the firmware in the handheld scanner that the delivery person used to bring it to you?
  - HelixEndeavor 5y ago
    What's your point here? That corporations who don't have to worry about the costs of proprietary software can deploy such without concern?
_Algernon_ 5y ago
>Stallman was as wrong about just as much stuff as he was right. When it comes to predicting the future correctly, 50/50 is a pretty good track record IMHO.
- sneak 5y ago
  The >=50% he was wrong about (I phrased it carefully, it could even be 99/1, as he has been Quite Seriously Wrong about many other things (how to lead FSF, how to communicate with the public, how to behave at conferences)) is likely of vastly greater importance than the few minor technical aspects he was right about. I'm on Team Free Software but I'm also on Team Productivity and it turns out that software engineering matters a lot to the latter and the quality and quantity of engineering effort put into free software is a tiny, tiny fraction of that put in to nonfree software. I doubt the right way to change this is by yelling at/chastising users and developers. If it were, Stallman would have been successful. As it appears, he's been mostly a failure.
city41 5y ago
Why does it have to be an either/or? Of course Stallman and a large group of volunteers can't compete with giant corporations. But their contributions are very valuable and needed. It also turns out that few hundred billion dollars of paid software engineering was greatly subsidized by volunteer open source work. Every Android phone in the world uses an open source kernel as one very obvious example. I for one am very grateful for Stallman and everyone else. I use Linux for everything. Works great, meets all of my needs with zero complaints. If it wasn't for them, I'd have no choice but to use Windows or MacOS.
- sneak 5y ago
  > Of course Stallman and a large group of volunteers can't compete with giant corporations. If they (or their ideology) can't, then nothing else they say has any relevance. > But their contributions are very valuable and needed. How so? Decades of their braying has not solved the problem; indeed things have gotten much worse.
arminiusreturns 5y ago
What OS's RMS suggest are irrelevant to the gp's comment that RMS saw this slippery slope in computing coming long before most. > No real way to build a skyscraper or produce a state of the art feature film on free software. Yes, CAD software is a known issue in FOSS land, but you can still run them in wine on linux when you have to. It is getting better though, lots of consistent updates to some of the foss-cads. Blender on the other hand, is now often the backbone of the feature film industry. As a matter of fact a large portion of the industry is moving more and more towards at least OSS. (https://www.aswf.io/projects/ https://www.aswf.io/projects/) > The whole world moved on to devices where not only is the software nonfree This is a blanket statement and not true. What about the fact that foss generally runs the vast majority of the internet that allows those non-free devices to function? You've basically got a bunch of linux boxes at the edge of every residential network. Reminds of that time I got into an argument with the Guardians senior technical editor who tried to tell me linux was irrelevant... The supercomputing top 500 certainly doesn't reflect such claims, since you mentioned "state-of-the-art". > there is not even an option of choosing free software, and, even if there were, there is no comparable free software to choose. In the vast majority of the cases, there are plenty of FOSS alternatives to choose. > Why? Because they work better and allow you to get more things done in less time. Why? Because the school system got locked into to proprietary software when it shouldn't have and thats all they train people on for the most part. Not because of inherent issues in the software interface.
- danudey 5y ago
  > Yes, CAD software is a known issue in FOSS land, but you can still run them in wine on linux when you have to. It is getting better though, lots of consistent updates to some of the foss-cads. And if you have any issue at all and need technical support, the company will say "That is not a supported configuration, sorry." and you're on your own. > This is a blanket statement and not true. What about the fact that foss generally runs the vast majority of the internet that allows those non-free devices to function? And non-free software runs the networking hardware that that internet runs over. > Because the school system got locked into to proprietary software when it shouldn't have and thats all they train people on for the most part. Because the school system trains people on what is actually being used, and not on what should, theoretically, be used, in a hypothetical scenario where everyone has weeks or months to relearn everything they know about computing (like how to install and use Linux, and then how to install and use Wine, and then how to install and use their proprietary business tools on Wine on Linux and solve any bugs that come up).
mrmonkeyman 5y ago
Feudal serf: without the master we would have nothing. Reality: a really tiny, almost microscopic group of free software enthousiasts have brought forth at least a couple of the best OSes the world will ever have, one of those being more successful than all others combined (Linux). There is more to computing than the desktop (and mobile). You have been lied to and will be lied to forever until you stop being a serf. Hard pill to swallow but no, proprietary bullshit "products" build by slaves don't hold a candle to anything produced by a group of skilled and competent enthousiasts not driven (and distracted) by morally repulsive and objectively suboptimal incentives.
ravenstine 5y ago
> No real way to build a skyscraper or produce a state of the art feature film on free software. I don't know much about building skyscrapers, but we neither need "state of the art feature film" nor are incapable of producing perfectly adequate film with the tools currently available as free software. There are also countless feature film and animation tools that run and are used on Linux all the time. Irrespective, I do actually think your viewpoint is valid generally speaking in that FOSS operating systems are inadequate for general purpose computing. They're great for servers or specific tooling, but they suck horse chestnuts if you just want something you can install whatever you want on them and just expect it to work as well as you can on something like macOS or Windows. Those who deny that usually are power users that don't see things from the perspective of the average person who isn't a software engineer or tinkerer. Of course, this is a failing of both the system and society itself. We ought to know better, but we are too lazy and too hooked on convenience to care enough.
- boudin 5y ago
  That's far from being true. Installing software on Windows and Macos is a shitshow. Dealing with updates is such a pain that it built the habit of ignoring updates as much as possible by default. The only thing that made things a bit better for users with little technical knowledge is the fact that more things are done in the browser nowdays, and this is true for any operating system.

pjmlp 5y ago

Not really, the only reason why UNIX got widespread was because originally AT&T wasn't allowed to charge for it, and its source code was available for a symbolic price alongside the source code, which eventually lead to the UNIX V6 annotated book. Had AT&T been allowed to sell UNIX from the get go, Stallman would have had to base his endevours on something else. Then again, it doesn't matter given the amount of GPL-hate nowadays that everyone goes with business friendly licenses.