6 ms·

Stallman has a vision that you and I should be typing our comments and playing our games from machines that are under our control, i.e., whereby we can inspect

by dangom 4y ago

Stallman has a vision that you and I should be typing our comments and playing our games from machines that are under our control, i.e., whereby we can inspect and modify all of the code that is running on them. That is not the case, and all Stallman is saying, is that this is bad for us. The Free Software Foundation was founded in 1985. From there since Free Software has only lost ground. I don't think Stallman would agree that "lack of pragmatism" is really what's stopping things from changing for better.

worik 4y ago
> From there since Free Software has only lost ground No it has not. I exclusively use Free Software outside my working life (for my sins, developing iOS software with Swift. A bit like Linux in 1997 - it mostly works)
TulliusCicero 4y ago
> That is not the case, and all Stallman is saying, is that this is bad for us. Right, but to most people, that's still an extreme position. Because again, like 99.99% of games are non-free, and especially the way he phrased it is gonna come across as a crank. Stallman strikes me very much as the kind of person who communicates poorly, in an inflammatory way, and gives zero shits how much this bothers anyone else. Which for a random individual is probably fine, or at least tolerable, but is less good when you're the face of a movement.
- dangom 4y ago
  It's 2022 and it's close to impossible for you and me to own a computer that we control. Even the thought of owning a computer we control is now seen as "extreme". If we did go through hops to have a machine that we control, it'd be practically impossible to use it to communicate with our friends and family, because all of our communications go through third party servers that we do not control. In exactly which way is Stallman being inflammatory here?
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    By framing playing virtually all video games in existence as being "bad for you".
    - toastercat 4y ago
      I read that more to mean that by playing games that are non-free, you are fueling the existence of more non-free games, and thus doing damage to yourself in the sense of "freedom" since you are perpetuating non-free software. The game itself is not causing harm to you.
      - Ensorceled 4y ago
        > I read that more to mean that by playing games that are non-free ... If it has to be interpreted, it is poorly communicated.
    - ewzimm 4y ago
      I think this can actually be a good tactic. If someone thinks of something like games as entirely good or bad, they will never understand the argument. Many people love alcohol but know it’s bad for them. Many people love games but know that digital restrictions work against them. It’s probably the easiest example to onboard people to the FSF’s ideas because the restrictions on games are so apparent. I use plenty of proprietary software, but I also know it’s bad for me. Like someone who enjoys alcohol, I think the benefits are worth the negative effects, but whenever I can get the same benefits from free software, I prefer them. I keep one computer around that runs only free software, and it’s great. It’s a decade old, but gains on desktop software performance in the last decade have been slow. Even Stallman gives one reason to use proprietary software: to make a free version of it. I’ll offer a liberal interpretation of that rule: most people work in technology need to use a wide variety of proprietary software to understand trends and developments in software paradigms, even if they are not directly copying it while using it. And my prediction: one day, all software will become free. All proprietary software is only temporarily restricted. Future computers will be able to reverse-engineer any existing program and create code that is functionally identical. That still makes it harmful, but that harm will eventually end. We just have the responsibility to make better laws in the future. Most important is preserving political freedom, and software freedom will eventually follow.
- trzy 4y ago
  Put a bunch of smart, pragmatic people in a room and you’ll only end up with the current state of the software industry. The stricter the rules, the more durable the movement. He could definitely benefit from coming across as more pleasant and affable, though.
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    He's extremely dogmatic, and so far his movement really doesn't seem to be working? Hard to way how much of that is his fault, though.
    - t-3 4y ago
      I'm interested in what you would consider success in the free software movement? GPL'd software is everywhere, Linux is a household name, proprietary competitors have been consistently overshadowed and made irrelevant. We are nowhere near a 100% free software world, but it's far better than 10 or 20 years ago, let alone 30+.
      - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
        The FSF has been chronically incapable of doing anything about SaaS. What good is GPL software if I'm forced to use an opaque version of it in a device out of my control to do my business? The FSF made the AGPL as a stopgap but it's been an unpopular license. So no, the world just moved proprietary software to the cloud with parts spun-off and GPLed on paper.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- skissane 4y ago
  Aren't most activist movements led – to a great extent – by people who take rather maximalist positions? This is true in areas which have nothing to do with free software. In a way, it is a form of society-wide bargaining. Ask for everything, get something. Ask for something, get nothing. Start big, end up small; start small, end up nowhere.
  - User23 4y ago
    Yes. See Taleb’s concept of the most intolerant minority getting their way.
- jcelerier 4y ago
  To most people in France in 1789 it was an extreme position to take power and shortly after put Louis XVI to the guillotine but two-something centuries after most are thankful this happened
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dralley 4y ago
>From there since Free Software has only lost ground That's not true, it gained ground for a long time after that. "Free" as in freedom software, by Stallman's definition, probably peaked in the early 2000s. And I would say that the losses mostly started happening when the FSF stopped producing software that people wanted to use. They effectively ignored the entire internet revolution.
- anthk 4y ago
  Not even close. We have Linux-libre backed distros today.
  - dralley 4y ago
    I don't think the number of distros endorsed by the FSF is a great metric for the influence of the FSF and free software on users and developers.
Beltalowda 4y ago
> The Free Software Foundation was founded in 1985. From there since Free Software has only lost ground. I don't think Stallman would agree that "lack of pragmatism" is really what's stopping things from changing for better. Or maybe the FSF has absolutely miserably failed at actually getting their message out there? The Right to Repair movement has been more successful; there's quite a bit of overlap between the concept of Free Software and Right To Repair: both are fundamentally about "I can do to the machine I bought whatever I want!" And it seems both the public and lawmakers are receptive to this argument. Right to Repair hasn't been as successful as I'd like (yet), but a lot more successful than Free Software. It seems to me that part of the blame squarely lies with FSF's inability to actually communicate their message effectively. Open Source has been more successful either. I never like this kind of externalizing of issues and blame other people/corporations/governments because it's just not helpful. Even if you're 100% correct about all of that, you can't change what other people/organisations do where you have no influence, but you can influence what you do, so it's almost always better to think about "what can I/we do better?" rather than "what can they do better?"
- _-david-_ 4y ago
  I think right to repair is easier for the average person to understand. You can just go to a repair shop and they can fix your device. Easy to understand. When you have a computer it can just work regardless if you are using free software or not. For the average person they won't see any visible / tangible benefit to free software. I don't think FSF communication really has that much of an impact on the success. Even if the average person understands the benefit to free software it just doesn't impact them in the same way that right to repair does and that will result in them not really caring about it.
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
    The average person also buys into the standard copyright argument of "you should own your creativity"; accepting software freedom requires, at a minimum, rejecting software copyright categorically[0]. This is a left-of-Marx view: even the extreme left does not touch copyright beyond anticapitalist generalities. In contrast, right to repair does not require abandoning the entire framework of copyright. In fact, it barely touches it. Furthermore, Louis Rossman is way better at explaining the problems with anti-repair bullshit than RMS is at explaining the harms of proprietary software. [0] Yes I know GPL relies upon copyright to work. That was the backup plan - if we can't force all software to be Free we can at least keep our own software from being locked down.
causality0 4y ago
all Stallman is saying, is that this is bad for us. That is just plain not true. If it were, that would be fantastic. Unfortunately that's only part of Stallman's message, and a good portion of the rest of it is either simply unworkable or batshit insane. To quote David Schlesinger after RMS got up on stage and talked about how "women who have not been introduced to emacs are emacs virgins and 'relieving them of their virginity is a sacred duty of all members of the church of emacs'", Stallman continues to embarrass us all
- worik 4y ago
  I have paid a lot of attention to RMS over the years. I took him out to dinner once, my wife and I, and had a lovely evening talking mostly about his childhood experiences. He was extremely respectful to the staff at the restaurant I recall. Going out of his way to compliment them on the food. That at some point he said: "women who have not been introduced to emacs...sacred duty of all members of the church of emacs" is entirely possible. We all have said stupid things. Out of context especially, had these things been recorded, we would be ashamed. To use that quote to define RMS is a gross insult, intellectually fraudulent, it is a political attack. I do think it is important to play nice in politics. So if you have criticisms of RMS' stand on software, make them. This sort of thing is insulting to all of us who do our best to imperfectly maintain standards of debate
  - seoaeu 4y ago
    People are defined by what they say though. And a quick google search reveals that RMS’s “emacs virgins” comment wasn’t just an out of character remark he made once in passing
    - worik 4y ago
      Perhaps because I do not use google (are you in a bubble?) I did not have that result searching. Before I commented I tried to find the source, interesting digressions ensued, but nothing that suggests this is typical. Also I mentioned I have been following him for a long time (nearly three decades, golly). I have never heard those sorts of words pass his lips. So I accuse you of telling a lie here. It is not uncommon to make up stories and exaggerate faults of those you politically oppose. Still lies
kome 4y ago
> From there since Free Software has only lost ground I mean, we live in a world powered by Free Software, so, I don't know, really. If anything, corporation were kinda successful making money out of free software, but that's another can of worms.
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
> The Free Software Foundation was founded in 1985. From there since Free Software has only lost ground I used computers in 1985. To suggest that the free software movement has only lost ground since then is completely absurd. Has it gone anywhere nearly as far as Stallman and others hoped it would? No. Has it gone much further than anyone who was around in 1985 to watch this being born thought it would go? Absolutely.
rnd0 4y ago
>The Free Software Foundation was founded in 1985. From there since Free Software has only lost ground. Are you joking? This was before my time, but there once was a time when you would not only have to pay for development tools, but pay for them seperately. Want a compiler? $500, please. Want something like Bison? Fork a few hundred. Want an assembler? Another few hundred. etc. There have been setbacks, and it does look like the tide is turning towards everything becoming closed again but it's untrue to say that Free Software has "only lost ground" since 1985 -hell, GCC didn't even come out until what, 1987, 1988 or so?
- yesenadam 4y ago
  Yes, and no limited-time demo version to try things out - you bought a copy-protected disk in a box in shrink-wrapped plastic from a shop. I remember when Turbo Pascal came out - at below $100 and not copy-protected it seemed revolutionary, virtually free, like they were giving it away, it was so much cheaper than the usual $500 price tag.

by dangom 4y ago

worik 4y ago

> From there since Free Software has only lost ground No it has not. I exclusively use Free Software outside my working life (for my sins, developing iOS software with Swift. A bit like Linux in 1997 - it mostly works)

TulliusCicero 4y ago

> That is not the case, and all Stallman is saying, is that this is bad for us. Right, but to most people, that's still an extreme position. Because again, like 99.99% of games are non-free, and especially the way he phrased it is gonna come across as a crank. Stallman strikes me very much as the kind of person who communicates poorly, in an inflammatory way, and gives zero shits how much this bothers anyone else. Which for a random individual is probably fine, or at least tolerable, but is less good when you're the face of a movement.

dangom 4y ago
It's 2022 and it's close to impossible for you and me to own a computer that we control. Even the thought of owning a computer we control is now seen as "extreme". If we did go through hops to have a machine that we control, it'd be practically impossible to use it to communicate with our friends and family, because all of our communications go through third party servers that we do not control. In exactly which way is Stallman being inflammatory here?
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  By framing playing virtually all video games in existence as being "bad for you".
  - toastercat 4y ago
    I read that more to mean that by playing games that are non-free, you are fueling the existence of more non-free games, and thus doing damage to yourself in the sense of "freedom" since you are perpetuating non-free software. The game itself is not causing harm to you.
    - Ensorceled 4y ago
      > I read that more to mean that by playing games that are non-free ... If it has to be interpreted, it is poorly communicated.
  - ewzimm 4y ago
    I think this can actually be a good tactic. If someone thinks of something like games as entirely good or bad, they will never understand the argument. Many people love alcohol but know it’s bad for them. Many people love games but know that digital restrictions work against them. It’s probably the easiest example to onboard people to the FSF’s ideas because the restrictions on games are so apparent. I use plenty of proprietary software, but I also know it’s bad for me. Like someone who enjoys alcohol, I think the benefits are worth the negative effects, but whenever I can get the same benefits from free software, I prefer them. I keep one computer around that runs only free software, and it’s great. It’s a decade old, but gains on desktop software performance in the last decade have been slow. Even Stallman gives one reason to use proprietary software: to make a free version of it. I’ll offer a liberal interpretation of that rule: most people work in technology need to use a wide variety of proprietary software to understand trends and developments in software paradigms, even if they are not directly copying it while using it. And my prediction: one day, all software will become free. All proprietary software is only temporarily restricted. Future computers will be able to reverse-engineer any existing program and create code that is functionally identical. That still makes it harmful, but that harm will eventually end. We just have the responsibility to make better laws in the future. Most important is preserving political freedom, and software freedom will eventually follow.
trzy 4y ago
Put a bunch of smart, pragmatic people in a room and you’ll only end up with the current state of the software industry. The stricter the rules, the more durable the movement. He could definitely benefit from coming across as more pleasant and affable, though.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  He's extremely dogmatic, and so far his movement really doesn't seem to be working? Hard to way how much of that is his fault, though.
  - t-3 4y ago
    I'm interested in what you would consider success in the free software movement? GPL'd software is everywhere, Linux is a household name, proprietary competitors have been consistently overshadowed and made irrelevant. We are nowhere near a 100% free software world, but it's far better than 10 or 20 years ago, let alone 30+.
    - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
      The FSF has been chronically incapable of doing anything about SaaS. What good is GPL software if I'm forced to use an opaque version of it in a device out of my control to do my business? The FSF made the AGPL as a stopgap but it's been an unpopular license. So no, the world just moved proprietary software to the cloud with parts spun-off and GPLed on paper.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
skissane 4y ago
Aren't most activist movements led – to a great extent – by people who take rather maximalist positions? This is true in areas which have nothing to do with free software. In a way, it is a form of society-wide bargaining. Ask for everything, get something. Ask for something, get nothing. Start big, end up small; start small, end up nowhere.
- User23 4y ago
  Yes. See Taleb’s concept of the most intolerant minority getting their way.
jcelerier 4y ago
To most people in France in 1789 it was an extreme position to take power and shortly after put Louis XVI to the guillotine but two-something centuries after most are thankful this happened

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dralley 4y ago

>From there since Free Software has only lost ground That's not true, it gained ground for a long time after that. "Free" as in freedom software, by Stallman's definition, probably peaked in the early 2000s. And I would say that the losses mostly started happening when the FSF stopped producing software that people wanted to use. They effectively ignored the entire internet revolution.

anthk 4y ago
Not even close. We have Linux-libre backed distros today.
- dralley 4y ago
  I don't think the number of distros endorsed by the FSF is a great metric for the influence of the FSF and free software on users and developers.

Beltalowda 4y ago

> The Free Software Foundation was founded in 1985. From there since Free Software has only lost ground. I don't think Stallman would agree that "lack of pragmatism" is really what's stopping things from changing for better. Or maybe the FSF has absolutely miserably failed at actually getting their message out there? The Right to Repair movement has been more successful; there's quite a bit of overlap between the concept of Free Software and Right To Repair: both are fundamentally about "I can do to the machine I bought whatever I want!" And it seems both the public and lawmakers are receptive to this argument. Right to Repair hasn't been as successful as I'd like (yet), but a lot more successful than Free Software. It seems to me that part of the blame squarely lies with FSF's inability to actually communicate their message effectively. Open Source has been more successful either. I never like this kind of externalizing of issues and blame other people/corporations/governments because it's just not helpful. Even if you're 100% correct about all of that, you can't change what other people/organisations do where you have no influence, but you can influence what you do, so it's almost always better to think about "what can I/we do better?" rather than "what can they do better?"

_-david-_ 4y ago
I think right to repair is easier for the average person to understand. You can just go to a repair shop and they can fix your device. Easy to understand. When you have a computer it can just work regardless if you are using free software or not. For the average person they won't see any visible / tangible benefit to free software. I don't think FSF communication really has that much of an impact on the success. Even if the average person understands the benefit to free software it just doesn't impact them in the same way that right to repair does and that will result in them not really caring about it.
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  The average person also buys into the standard copyright argument of "you should own your creativity"; accepting software freedom requires, at a minimum, rejecting software copyright categorically[0]. This is a left-of-Marx view: even the extreme left does not touch copyright beyond anticapitalist generalities. In contrast, right to repair does not require abandoning the entire framework of copyright. In fact, it barely touches it. Furthermore, Louis Rossman is way better at explaining the problems with anti-repair bullshit than RMS is at explaining the harms of proprietary software. [0] Yes I know GPL relies upon copyright to work. That was the backup plan - if we can't force all software to be Free we can at least keep our own software from being locked down.

causality0 4y ago

all Stallman is saying, is that this is bad for us. That is just plain not true. If it were, that would be fantastic. Unfortunately that's only part of Stallman's message, and a good portion of the rest of it is either simply unworkable or batshit insane. To quote David Schlesinger after RMS got up on stage and talked about how "women who have not been introduced to emacs are emacs virgins and 'relieving them of their virginity is a sacred duty of all members of the church of emacs'", Stallman continues to embarrass us all

worik 4y ago
I have paid a lot of attention to RMS over the years. I took him out to dinner once, my wife and I, and had a lovely evening talking mostly about his childhood experiences. He was extremely respectful to the staff at the restaurant I recall. Going out of his way to compliment them on the food. That at some point he said: "women who have not been introduced to emacs...sacred duty of all members of the church of emacs" is entirely possible. We all have said stupid things. Out of context especially, had these things been recorded, we would be ashamed. To use that quote to define RMS is a gross insult, intellectually fraudulent, it is a political attack. I do think it is important to play nice in politics. So if you have criticisms of RMS' stand on software, make them. This sort of thing is insulting to all of us who do our best to imperfectly maintain standards of debate
- seoaeu 4y ago
  People are defined by what they say though. And a quick google search reveals that RMS’s “emacs virgins” comment wasn’t just an out of character remark he made once in passing
  - worik 4y ago
    Perhaps because I do not use google (are you in a bubble?) I did not have that result searching. Before I commented I tried to find the source, interesting digressions ensued, but nothing that suggests this is typical. Also I mentioned I have been following him for a long time (nearly three decades, golly). I have never heard those sorts of words pass his lips. So I accuse you of telling a lie here. It is not uncommon to make up stories and exaggerate faults of those you politically oppose. Still lies

kome 4y ago

> From there since Free Software has only lost ground I mean, we live in a world powered by Free Software, so, I don't know, really. If anything, corporation were kinda successful making money out of free software, but that's another can of worms.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

> The Free Software Foundation was founded in 1985. From there since Free Software has only lost ground I used computers in 1985. To suggest that the free software movement has only lost ground since then is completely absurd. Has it gone anywhere nearly as far as Stallman and others hoped it would? No. Has it gone much further than anyone who was around in 1985 to watch this being born thought it would go? Absolutely.

rnd0 4y ago

>The Free Software Foundation was founded in 1985. From there since Free Software has only lost ground. Are you joking? This was before my time, but there once was a time when you would not only have to pay for development tools, but pay for them seperately. Want a compiler? $500, please. Want something like Bison? Fork a few hundred. Want an assembler? Another few hundred. etc. There have been setbacks, and it does look like the tide is turning towards everything becoming closed again but it's untrue to say that Free Software has "only lost ground" since 1985 -hell, GCC didn't even come out until what, 1987, 1988 or so?

yesenadam 4y ago
Yes, and no limited-time demo version to try things out - you bought a copy-protected disk in a box in shrink-wrapped plastic from a shop. I remember when Turbo Pascal came out - at below $100 and not copy-protected it seemed revolutionary, virtually free, like they were giving it away, it was so much cheaper than the usual $500 price tag.