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Unintentionally hilarious given the way the FSF worked to make itself irrelevant by ignoring hosted apps for decades. I mailed them in the late 90s asking why i

by Harkins 18y ago

Unintentionally hilarious given the way the FSF worked to make itself irrelevant by ignoring hosted apps for decades. I mailed them in the late 90s asking why it was that running an app on my computer meant I should get the source code but running the exact same app via telnet meant I shouldn't. At the time I was writing a MUD server I wanted to open source, but I was also thinking of websites. The only answer I got was that, yes, the GPL doesn't cover this and they have no interest in extending it to do so. Stallman can whine about it if he likes, but he can't pretend this is some sudden terrible attack on Free Software - it's been a problem for a long time, and it's been ignored for a long time. (Yeah, I'm aware of the Affero GPL. AGPLv2 was just bad. AGPLv3 is decent but way late and inexplicably separate from the GPL.)

Herring 18y ago
I remember reading some Eben Moglen & i think he mentioned that they didn't hardcode this into GPLv3 because the rights of someone using an ATM are (should be?) different from those of someone owning the machine with the code. When trying to grok the GPL, it helps to keep rms' MIT printer story in mind. It's on wiki.
- 13ren 18y ago
  It's not about open vs. closed source: The 55-year-old New Yorker said that computer users should be keen to keep their information in their own hands, rather than hand it over to a third party.
  - alecco 18y ago
    "users should be keen to keep their information in their own hands" That's Zero Knowledge. Like the recently unfunded fantastic Clipperz library. I can't believe no smart investor found a way to make money with that. It torpedoed my respect for angel investment. Anything "social" gets money, something that can revolutionize the whole Internet experience, zip.
    - 13ren 18y ago
      I honestly thought that was a Douglas Adam-style parody (from one of the later books). Holding all your passwords in one place (no matter how secure) creates a single point of vulnerability. I do think that it's (theoretically) possible to safely store (in some respects) your data online, through encryption... but this doesn't protect you from innocent data loss (e.g. act of god, bankruptcy, incompetence, bad luck etc). Why not store all your data locally as well, so it's distributed git-style, and only use the cloud for crunching/archive? This is the model that Google (google gears) and Adobe are moving towards (though I thought their main motivation was so you could work off-line). HDD are unbelievably cheap, and getting cheaper and cheaper... Gmail gives you 7GB for free - wow, that's so much! - but how much do you have at home already? There's no shortage; it's just convenience. That startup's PR connection with Stallman (that they use GPLv3, they talked to Stallman and are concerned about the same problems) seems tenuous and disingenuous to me (though I didn't investigate in depth). I still think it might be a parody.
      - alecco 18y ago
        Please try it before bad mouthing a very clever and working project. They don't forbid you from storing things things locally. And it isn't just for passwords. This is for anything really. Watch their presentations at least.
        13ren 18y ago
        OK, I just went through their presentation at your request, and I have the same opinion. I'm not the only one, according to their own page here: http://www.clipperz.com/users/marco/blog/2007/12/24/how_dumb_are_we http://www.clipperz.com/users/marco/blog/2007/12/24/how_dumb... I know something about public/private key encryption (or once did). I'm not criticizing that, but their application of it. In their presentation, they say that they picked passwords as the hardest possible test of their idea (i.e. the one people are least likely to accept). I think this is where the "parody" aspect comes in, with their professed motive of proving a point, rather than picking the most likely candidate for adoption. I wasn't bad-mouthing them, but listing definite concerns. You might see the Douglas Adams reference as "bad-mouthing", except that what I'm referring to is his fictional idea of storing all your identification/passwords as one - i.e. what these guys are doing. I also don't think it's bad-mouthing to state my opinion that their PR connection to Stallman is tenuous, since they promote online storage in his name - which he appears to oppose (in the very article we are commenting on, I might add). But of course, they still could change the world through their ideas, ideology or technology - everyone has that chance if only they take it. I strongly believe in encouraging anyone who takes action (so it would be really cool if they proved me wrong - and I'd have something to learn which would be a bonus for me). But I also think it's important to discuss ideas with intellectual honestly. Those two views are at odds sometimes, and I don't always know how to resolve them. If you disagree with my criticism, you could focus on refuting it instead of labeling it as "bad-mouthing".
  - Herring 18y ago
    "It's not about open vs. closed source:" Well yeah, i agree. The poster I was replying to made it about source code.
    - 13ren 18y ago
      I probably should have replied to that poster instead.
      - Harkins 18y ago
        Ah. Then insert a reply rant from me about how Stallman and the FSF still don't get it.

by Harkins 18y ago

Herring 18y ago

I remember reading some Eben Moglen & i think he mentioned that they didn't hardcode this into GPLv3 because the rights of someone using an ATM are (should be?) different from those of someone owning the machine with the code. When trying to grok the GPL, it helps to keep rms' MIT printer story in mind. It's on wiki.

13ren 18y ago
It's not about open vs. closed source: The 55-year-old New Yorker said that computer users should be keen to keep their information in their own hands, rather than hand it over to a third party.
- alecco 18y ago
  "users should be keen to keep their information in their own hands" That's Zero Knowledge. Like the recently unfunded fantastic Clipperz library. I can't believe no smart investor found a way to make money with that. It torpedoed my respect for angel investment. Anything "social" gets money, something that can revolutionize the whole Internet experience, zip.
  - 13ren 18y ago
    I honestly thought that was a Douglas Adam-style parody (from one of the later books). Holding all your passwords in one place (no matter how secure) creates a single point of vulnerability. I do think that it's (theoretically) possible to safely store (in some respects) your data online, through encryption... but this doesn't protect you from innocent data loss (e.g. act of god, bankruptcy, incompetence, bad luck etc). Why not store all your data locally as well, so it's distributed git-style, and only use the cloud for crunching/archive? This is the model that Google (google gears) and Adobe are moving towards (though I thought their main motivation was so you could work off-line). HDD are unbelievably cheap, and getting cheaper and cheaper... Gmail gives you 7GB for free - wow, that's so much! - but how much do you have at home already? There's no shortage; it's just convenience. That startup's PR connection with Stallman (that they use GPLv3, they talked to Stallman and are concerned about the same problems) seems tenuous and disingenuous to me (though I didn't investigate in depth). I still think it might be a parody.
    - alecco 18y ago
      Please try it before bad mouthing a very clever and working project. They don't forbid you from storing things things locally. And it isn't just for passwords. This is for anything really. Watch their presentations at least.
      - 13ren 18y ago
        OK, I just went through their presentation at your request, and I have the same opinion. I'm not the only one, according to their own page here: http://www.clipperz.com/users/marco/blog/2007/12/24/how_dumb_are_we http://www.clipperz.com/users/marco/blog/2007/12/24/how_dumb... I know something about public/private key encryption (or once did). I'm not criticizing that, but their application of it. In their presentation, they say that they picked passwords as the hardest possible test of their idea (i.e. the one people are least likely to accept). I think this is where the "parody" aspect comes in, with their professed motive of proving a point, rather than picking the most likely candidate for adoption. I wasn't bad-mouthing them, but listing definite concerns. You might see the Douglas Adams reference as "bad-mouthing", except that what I'm referring to is his fictional idea of storing all your identification/passwords as one - i.e. what these guys are doing. I also don't think it's bad-mouthing to state my opinion that their PR connection to Stallman is tenuous, since they promote online storage in his name - which he appears to oppose (in the very article we are commenting on, I might add). But of course, they still could change the world through their ideas, ideology or technology - everyone has that chance if only they take it. I strongly believe in encouraging anyone who takes action (so it would be really cool if they proved me wrong - and I'd have something to learn which would be a bonus for me). But I also think it's important to discuss ideas with intellectual honestly. Those two views are at odds sometimes, and I don't always know how to resolve them. If you disagree with my criticism, you could focus on refuting it instead of labeling it as "bad-mouthing".
- Herring 18y ago
  "It's not about open vs. closed source:" Well yeah, i agree. The poster I was replying to made it about source code.
  - 13ren 18y ago
    I probably should have replied to that poster instead.
    - Harkins 18y ago
      Ah. Then insert a reply rant from me about how Stallman and the FSF still don't get it.