6 ms·

I get where they’re coming from, but this just sounds insane. If there were FOSS CPU microcode that could replace it or something and they only wanted to suppor

I get where they’re coming from, but this just sounds insane. If there were FOSS CPU microcode that could replace it or something and they only wanted to support that than fine, but if there’s no FOSS option why create security risks for users? I love the FOSS community, but sometimes their rationale is a bit too extreme for the average person to get behind.

gjsman-1000 5y ago
“is a bit too extreme” Understatement of the year. You are a dev who wants to make some money on the side and keeps her software proprietary because monetizing open-source is a rare exception than the rule? F!@# her and her lack of ethics! And don’t touch her software, or her, with a 10 foot pole, let alone pay for it! Oh, there’s a proprietary firmware blob that this device requires, but it runs off onboard flash so the OS doesn’t see it? Perfectly fine! If the OS doesn’t see it, see no evil, speak no evil, there is no evil. The FSF are the Puritans of the 21st century. Both in extremity and hypocrisy.
- quadrangle 5y ago
  What a reactive, defensive attitude. Just try applying everything you wrote to the topic of being vegetarian. Vegetarians are indeed arguing against meat-eating, and you could talk about how you are just some pig farmer selling meat on the side, and the vegetarians are saying "F You!" And then there's the practical problems with whether animal products are identified in various food products… And people get super defensive about that stuff too. But this desire to reject the FSF or the vegetarians and call them extremists and hypocrites amounts to an emotional refusal to engage fairly with any of the actual issues or even what the people are actually saying or doing.
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    Nothing I said was not true. The FSF encourages all members to shun proprietary software of any kind - which is why we have Linux-Libre and Trisquel. Even though, to put it simply, monetizing open source is very rare and the FSF looks down on people (including solo programmers) with the gall to keep their software proprietary. The FSF is also a complete hypocrite when it comes to firmware. Proprietary firmware which the OS can’t see (because it is loaded from onboard flash) is compliant with their “Respects Your Freedom” hardware certification, which is asinine and actively reduces my freedom to reverse-engineer that firmware or replace it with an open driver. According to FSF logic, a solo programmer making proprietary software for money is to be shunned. A device with an embedded proprietary blob could be certified as freedom-respecting and tolerable. That’s retarded.
    - quadrangle 5y ago
      There are vegans who encourage shunning animal products. And yes, there are critiques of people with the "gall" to eat meat. Those facts don't mean they are wrong. That's a matter of engaging with the actual arguments. To say the RYF certifcation is hypocritical is a misunderstanding. They drew a line for certification that isn't 100% puritanical. They aren't absolutely impractical. They don't say that your points about firmware don't matter, they just wanted a line that could be practical for the certification. I recognize your point, but your language and judgments are out of line. The FSF argues that embedded blobs that are completely unchangeable by anyone are similar to hardware. Now, I happen to agree with you that the lack of freedom is still a problem. But the distinction they make isn't totally illogical. Vegan movements can be extreme too, and you can criticize them. But the level of animosity and defensiveness people get into shows that people are really sensitive about these things. It's as though they recognize that there might really be some fundamental issues with proprietary software or with meat, and the existence of the anti-proprietary or anti-meat views cuts people to the core. I mean, it's one thing to simply disagree, but it says a lot more when people are SO emotional about it.
      - scoopertrooper 5y ago
        Seems to me that they've found themselves stuck with the worst of both worlds. A freedom/privacy certification that has a pretty glaring (and arguably hypocritical) omission, and a tepid response from industry because they won't budge on things like including proprietary drivers for Windows. Their certified product list is... sparse. https://ryf.fsf.org/products https://ryf.fsf.org/products
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    the same thing applies to vegetarians. Smart and effective vegetarians who want to promote vegetarianism don't fill a balloon with red paint and throw it at someone while screaming 'meat is murder!', they convince people to cut down their consumption, promote alternatives that ordinary people can deal with, and as a result get 50% of what they want to a hundred times as many people, which is more than 100% of nothing. That's the difference between ideologues and people who actually care about the values they promote rather than people who aggrandize themselves.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
      > Smart and effective vegetarians who want to promote vegetarianism don't fill a balloon with red paint and throw it at someone while screaming 'meat is murder!' Are the GNU/FSF folks doing that? The most I'm aware of is strongly-worded blog posts, which is rather short of physical ... outbursts.
    - quadrangle 5y ago
      The analogy works because 99.9% of vegetarians don't even use words to directly tell others that they are unethical, they just assert their OWN vegetarianism as an ethical decision, and others go bonkers as though this is the most grotesque personal attack. This all happens without any red-paint-balloons or other extremist stuff. In other words, when someone comes along and says what amounts to "for ethical reasons, I behave differently than you", people interpret it (understandably but unreasonably) as saying "you are an unethical person" (whereas the responsible reaction is, "hmm, maybe there's an ethical issue here that I should consider that I haven't yet"). Then, people focus all their attention on rationalizations to reject the other person, such as calling them "ideologues". The Trisquel website doesn't say, "if you use or make proprietary software, you are evil". People react to the subtle implications as if that's what it said though. Maybe that's because people don't want to admit that they actually do act in ways that are ethical compromises?
- mustache_kimono 5y ago
  This shouldn't be downvoted. It's an opinion that is unpopular here, but which needs to be stated occasionally. The FSF is extreme, and, right now, not 10-20 years ago, but right now, the FSF and Stallman are negative assets for FOSS.
  - bogwog 5y ago
    How is it “extreme”? The point of the FSF is to foster and support free software. Supporting non-free software is literally the opposite of their mission. The guy you replied to is being childish and exaggerating. The FSF isn’t some extremist organization out to destroy people who dare to write or use closed source software. Do they refuse to include proprietary software in their distributions/projects? Obviously. Are they going to tell you to go fuck yourself because you refuse to release the source code to your app? Probably not (I guess if you’re an asshole about it, someone might) > the FSF and Stallman are negative assets for FOSS The FSF and Stallman are the only assets for FOSS. Who else is supporting free software?
    - kube-system 5y ago
      > The FSF and Stallman are the only assets for FOSS. The FSF doesn't even support the use of the term "FOSS". They support the idea of libre software. The broader "open source" community is much larger than the FSF or RMS. The GPL is the third most popular FOSS license.
      - bogwog 5y ago
        > The FSF doesn't even support the use of the term "FOSS". Personally I use "FOSS" as shorthand for FSF's definition of "free software". If that's misleading, then I guess I should stop using it. Would you happen to have a link to a blog post or something about this? > They support the idea of libre software. The broader "open source" community is much larger than the FSF or RMS. I'm not talking about the "open source" community. There's a difference between free software and open source software. It's obvious that I'm not talking about "open source" here, otherwise it'd suggest that I think FSF and RMS are the only ones writing open source software. I can't even imagine a situation where someone could be led to believe that, especially on HN. > The GPL is the third most popular FOSS license. Regardless of what you mean by "FOSS" here, how is that statistic relevant to the discussion?
- widespace_ 5y ago
  >Understatement of the year. You are a dev who wants to make some money on the side and keeps her software proprietary because monetizing open-source is a rare exception than the rule? F!@# her and her lack of ethics! And don’t touch her software, or her, with a 10 foot pole, let alone pay for it! Are you asking for the free software foundation to support proprietary software?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - MaxBarraclough 5y ago
    I think that's just the point here: yes, strictly speaking they are, but practically speaking the alternative is to put the user's cybersecurity at risk. If you ask just about any user, they will say they prioritise their cybersecurity over the purity of their Free Software stack. The FSF seemingly disagree. That disagreement is an important one.
    - Ygg2 5y ago
      I don't know. You can spin a lot of stuff as cyber security. Hosting all stuff in cloud does prevent getting locked by some ransom ware. Plus security isn't an absolute. A determined enough actor could always hack you.
- Mc91 5y ago
  > Puritans of the 21st century. Both in extremity For work I run MacOS, because they assigned me a Macbook and pay me to do so. Currently I program Android, which has a free software system somewhere under there, although there are unfree layers on top, which have been discussed to death. I also personally use Ubuntu for my desktop and laptop. Years ago I put Gnewsense as a boot-up option for a machine. For different tasks I use different levels of proprietary or free software. I don't see my installing of Gnewsense as puritanical or extreme (me wanting full control of my OS is puritanical and extreme?), just as I don't see me using the proprietary MacOS as puritanical and extreme. If me being able to control my own operating system is puritanical and extreme, then what do you call having someone else being able to control my operating system? There may be free extremists but that means there are proprietary extremists as well.
- squarefoot 5y ago
  You miss the point. It is absolutely true that making a living by writing FOSS is really hard, but it's not just about money. Monetizing out of personal data and advertising has never been profitable like today; Open Source is the only defense against abuse in that context. Look at what many popular closed operating systems and products, hardware included, became in the last 10 years or less: they stopped being tools in the hands of the user to morph into business platforms that mine users' data and/or bomb them with advertising. Many people probably would accept to live in a world in which every square meter is plastered with some ads and every move is analyzed to infer users habits and ultimately find what would be the easiest way to grab the most money from them, but I don't. All this privacy and security aside, which in some countries can make the difference between being poor and being poor and jailed or dead. FOSS is the last line of defense against that kind of abuse, being a bit extremist when dealing with abuses is a sign that someone, somewhere, understood what is going on. BTW: if making money with FOSS is hard, it's not FOSS fault, but rather it shows how badly our economic system has failed.
  - scoopertrooper 5y ago
    > BTW: if making money with FOSS is hard, it's not FOSS fault, but rather it shows how badly our economic system has failed. If your business gives away its products for free, then it's always going to be an uphill battle to make money.
    - easrng 5y ago
      Just pre-fund with kickstarter or similar.
      - squarefoot 5y ago
        Or through a light taxation system for biggest companies. If say .01% of the revenue of the 100 biggest IT corporations was distributed yearly among the most useful projects, those in need of maintainers etc, the developers living in bad economical conditions etc. the problem would probably cease to exist for thousands of developers while those being taxed would barely notice some missing change from their pockets. Not that different from public healthcare, therefore it requires a change of perspectives (the common good) to fully understand it.
- Noobdevs 5y ago

gjsman-1000 5y ago

“is a bit too extreme” Understatement of the year. You are a dev who wants to make some money on the side and keeps her software proprietary because monetizing open-source is a rare exception than the rule? F!@# her and her lack of ethics! And don’t touch her software, or her, with a 10 foot pole, let alone pay for it! Oh, there’s a proprietary firmware blob that this device requires, but it runs off onboard flash so the OS doesn’t see it? Perfectly fine! If the OS doesn’t see it, see no evil, speak no evil, there is no evil. The FSF are the Puritans of the 21st century. Both in extremity and hypocrisy.

quadrangle 5y ago
What a reactive, defensive attitude. Just try applying everything you wrote to the topic of being vegetarian. Vegetarians are indeed arguing against meat-eating, and you could talk about how you are just some pig farmer selling meat on the side, and the vegetarians are saying "F You!" And then there's the practical problems with whether animal products are identified in various food products… And people get super defensive about that stuff too. But this desire to reject the FSF or the vegetarians and call them extremists and hypocrites amounts to an emotional refusal to engage fairly with any of the actual issues or even what the people are actually saying or doing.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  Nothing I said was not true. The FSF encourages all members to shun proprietary software of any kind - which is why we have Linux-Libre and Trisquel. Even though, to put it simply, monetizing open source is very rare and the FSF looks down on people (including solo programmers) with the gall to keep their software proprietary. The FSF is also a complete hypocrite when it comes to firmware. Proprietary firmware which the OS can’t see (because it is loaded from onboard flash) is compliant with their “Respects Your Freedom” hardware certification, which is asinine and actively reduces my freedom to reverse-engineer that firmware or replace it with an open driver. According to FSF logic, a solo programmer making proprietary software for money is to be shunned. A device with an embedded proprietary blob could be certified as freedom-respecting and tolerable. That’s retarded.
  - quadrangle 5y ago
    There are vegans who encourage shunning animal products. And yes, there are critiques of people with the "gall" to eat meat. Those facts don't mean they are wrong. That's a matter of engaging with the actual arguments. To say the RYF certifcation is hypocritical is a misunderstanding. They drew a line for certification that isn't 100% puritanical. They aren't absolutely impractical. They don't say that your points about firmware don't matter, they just wanted a line that could be practical for the certification. I recognize your point, but your language and judgments are out of line. The FSF argues that embedded blobs that are completely unchangeable by anyone are similar to hardware. Now, I happen to agree with you that the lack of freedom is still a problem. But the distinction they make isn't totally illogical. Vegan movements can be extreme too, and you can criticize them. But the level of animosity and defensiveness people get into shows that people are really sensitive about these things. It's as though they recognize that there might really be some fundamental issues with proprietary software or with meat, and the existence of the anti-proprietary or anti-meat views cuts people to the core. I mean, it's one thing to simply disagree, but it says a lot more when people are SO emotional about it.
    - scoopertrooper 5y ago
      Seems to me that they've found themselves stuck with the worst of both worlds. A freedom/privacy certification that has a pretty glaring (and arguably hypocritical) omission, and a tepid response from industry because they won't budge on things like including proprietary drivers for Windows. Their certified product list is... sparse. https://ryf.fsf.org/products https://ryf.fsf.org/products
- Barrin92 5y ago
  the same thing applies to vegetarians. Smart and effective vegetarians who want to promote vegetarianism don't fill a balloon with red paint and throw it at someone while screaming 'meat is murder!', they convince people to cut down their consumption, promote alternatives that ordinary people can deal with, and as a result get 50% of what they want to a hundred times as many people, which is more than 100% of nothing. That's the difference between ideologues and people who actually care about the values they promote rather than people who aggrandize themselves.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    > Smart and effective vegetarians who want to promote vegetarianism don't fill a balloon with red paint and throw it at someone while screaming 'meat is murder!' Are the GNU/FSF folks doing that? The most I'm aware of is strongly-worded blog posts, which is rather short of physical ... outbursts.
  - quadrangle 5y ago
    The analogy works because 99.9% of vegetarians don't even use words to directly tell others that they are unethical, they just assert their OWN vegetarianism as an ethical decision, and others go bonkers as though this is the most grotesque personal attack. This all happens without any red-paint-balloons or other extremist stuff. In other words, when someone comes along and says what amounts to "for ethical reasons, I behave differently than you", people interpret it (understandably but unreasonably) as saying "you are an unethical person" (whereas the responsible reaction is, "hmm, maybe there's an ethical issue here that I should consider that I haven't yet"). Then, people focus all their attention on rationalizations to reject the other person, such as calling them "ideologues". The Trisquel website doesn't say, "if you use or make proprietary software, you are evil". People react to the subtle implications as if that's what it said though. Maybe that's because people don't want to admit that they actually do act in ways that are ethical compromises?
mustache_kimono 5y ago
This shouldn't be downvoted. It's an opinion that is unpopular here, but which needs to be stated occasionally. The FSF is extreme, and, right now, not 10-20 years ago, but right now, the FSF and Stallman are negative assets for FOSS.
- bogwog 5y ago
  How is it “extreme”? The point of the FSF is to foster and support free software. Supporting non-free software is literally the opposite of their mission. The guy you replied to is being childish and exaggerating. The FSF isn’t some extremist organization out to destroy people who dare to write or use closed source software. Do they refuse to include proprietary software in their distributions/projects? Obviously. Are they going to tell you to go fuck yourself because you refuse to release the source code to your app? Probably not (I guess if you’re an asshole about it, someone might) > the FSF and Stallman are negative assets for FOSS The FSF and Stallman are the only assets for FOSS. Who else is supporting free software?
  - kube-system 5y ago
    > The FSF and Stallman are the only assets for FOSS. The FSF doesn't even support the use of the term "FOSS". They support the idea of libre software. The broader "open source" community is much larger than the FSF or RMS. The GPL is the third most popular FOSS license.
    - bogwog 5y ago
      > The FSF doesn't even support the use of the term "FOSS". Personally I use "FOSS" as shorthand for FSF's definition of "free software". If that's misleading, then I guess I should stop using it. Would you happen to have a link to a blog post or something about this? > They support the idea of libre software. The broader "open source" community is much larger than the FSF or RMS. I'm not talking about the "open source" community. There's a difference between free software and open source software. It's obvious that I'm not talking about "open source" here, otherwise it'd suggest that I think FSF and RMS are the only ones writing open source software. I can't even imagine a situation where someone could be led to believe that, especially on HN. > The GPL is the third most popular FOSS license. Regardless of what you mean by "FOSS" here, how is that statistic relevant to the discussion?
widespace_ 5y ago
>Understatement of the year. You are a dev who wants to make some money on the side and keeps her software proprietary because monetizing open-source is a rare exception than the rule? F!@# her and her lack of ethics! And don’t touch her software, or her, with a 10 foot pole, let alone pay for it! Are you asking for the free software foundation to support proprietary software?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- MaxBarraclough 5y ago
  I think that's just the point here: yes, strictly speaking they are, but practically speaking the alternative is to put the user's cybersecurity at risk. If you ask just about any user, they will say they prioritise their cybersecurity over the purity of their Free Software stack. The FSF seemingly disagree. That disagreement is an important one.
  - Ygg2 5y ago
    I don't know. You can spin a lot of stuff as cyber security. Hosting all stuff in cloud does prevent getting locked by some ransom ware. Plus security isn't an absolute. A determined enough actor could always hack you.
Mc91 5y ago
> Puritans of the 21st century. Both in extremity For work I run MacOS, because they assigned me a Macbook and pay me to do so. Currently I program Android, which has a free software system somewhere under there, although there are unfree layers on top, which have been discussed to death. I also personally use Ubuntu for my desktop and laptop. Years ago I put Gnewsense as a boot-up option for a machine. For different tasks I use different levels of proprietary or free software. I don't see my installing of Gnewsense as puritanical or extreme (me wanting full control of my OS is puritanical and extreme?), just as I don't see me using the proprietary MacOS as puritanical and extreme. If me being able to control my own operating system is puritanical and extreme, then what do you call having someone else being able to control my operating system? There may be free extremists but that means there are proprietary extremists as well.
squarefoot 5y ago
You miss the point. It is absolutely true that making a living by writing FOSS is really hard, but it's not just about money. Monetizing out of personal data and advertising has never been profitable like today; Open Source is the only defense against abuse in that context. Look at what many popular closed operating systems and products, hardware included, became in the last 10 years or less: they stopped being tools in the hands of the user to morph into business platforms that mine users' data and/or bomb them with advertising. Many people probably would accept to live in a world in which every square meter is plastered with some ads and every move is analyzed to infer users habits and ultimately find what would be the easiest way to grab the most money from them, but I don't. All this privacy and security aside, which in some countries can make the difference between being poor and being poor and jailed or dead. FOSS is the last line of defense against that kind of abuse, being a bit extremist when dealing with abuses is a sign that someone, somewhere, understood what is going on. BTW: if making money with FOSS is hard, it's not FOSS fault, but rather it shows how badly our economic system has failed.
- scoopertrooper 5y ago
  > BTW: if making money with FOSS is hard, it's not FOSS fault, but rather it shows how badly our economic system has failed. If your business gives away its products for free, then it's always going to be an uphill battle to make money.
  - easrng 5y ago
    Just pre-fund with kickstarter or similar.
    - squarefoot 5y ago
      Or through a light taxation system for biggest companies. If say .01% of the revenue of the 100 biggest IT corporations was distributed yearly among the most useful projects, those in need of maintainers etc, the developers living in bad economical conditions etc. the problem would probably cease to exist for thousands of developers while those being taxed would barely notice some missing change from their pockets. Not that different from public healthcare, therefore it requires a change of perspectives (the common good) to fully understand it.
Noobdevs 5y ago