7 ms·

I don't agree with Richard Stallman's political or social views but he was right all along when it came to being wary of software not having the user's best int

I don't agree with Richard Stallman's political or social views but he was right all along when it came to being wary of software not having the user's best interests in mind.

grobbyy 4y ago
Richard Stallman had extreme Cassandra Complex. Virtually everything he wrote 30 years ago came true (or will soon), but no one believed him.
- imachine1980_ 4y ago
  the problem is he also have so f**g wrong opinions about so much s*t, but yes when it come to software he was right all the way, that make follow him a mental gymnastics marathon.
  - gryf 4y ago
    I haven't followed him for over 15 years when he started branching out from software into other things. What crazy has he accumulated since?
    - heleninboodler 4y ago
      Spoken like a person who has never attempted to give Richard Stallman a parrot.
      - gryf 4y ago
        I just googled that reference. Weugh.
        heleninboodler 4y ago
        The whole rider is pretty nutty. Even on fairly mundane requirements he manages to sound a bit crazy. "I absolutely refuse to have a break in the middle of my speech. Once I start, I will go straight through." Presumably at some point he said he didn't want to take a break but someone stuck a break in the agenda anyway and he decided to declare his intention to throw a fit if that ever happens again. It reads a little like "100 ways in which RMS cannot handle the unexpected."
  - nequo 4y ago
    I'm hoping to see a GPL revival with a shift back from MIT/BSD. But one can hope.
    - ilc 4y ago
      Big corps won't let that happen. They make too much from MIT/BSD. Look at FAANG and other companies' policy towards the GPL and their abuse of BSD, and I think it is pretty clear what's up.
      - nequo 4y ago
        Do you have any links about their BSD abuse? I would like to read more.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
        > their abuse of BSD It's perfect by legitimate to prefer copyleft, but I struggle to take seriously the idea that a license can be abused by following its terms, particularly when the reason people put stuff under permissive licenses is to let anyone do whatever they want with it without giving back.
    - aaa_aaa 4y ago
      How is a totalitarian state's actions are related with MIT/BSD anyway? It is absurd to think that states care about software licenses.
  - wazoox 4y ago
    > he also have so f*g wrong opinions about so much s*t Care to provide examples?
  - concordDance 4y ago
    Struggled to parse this, but why would it be a problem that he was wrong about things outside his speciality? A professor of astrophysics being "wrong" about his opinions on whether eating meat is ethical says very little about how right he is on exoplanet mass distributions. (I happen to agree with Stallman on his non-software views that I know about, so am a bit curious on what you disagree with)
- torvald 4y ago
  Hence the fitting subredddit https://old.reddit.com/r/StallmanWasRight https://old.reddit.com/r/StallmanWasRight
- jmount 4y ago
  The Cassandra point is interesting. I think the loss of freedoms Richard Stallman described were very much what was already happening around in with the Lisp environment. He was correct in saying this would be repeated as software ate the world. So roughly the things he was right about were very hard to prevent. Which is partly why he was right.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    Stallman came up in the time of mainframes and dumb terminals; so he had mainframe concerns and mainframe critiques. His relevance now is because we too have shifted to mainframes, but we don't call it mainframe and dumb terminals anymore, we say 'cloud' and 'mobile'. We are rebuilding the future in effigy of our past because it's what we know. Stallman's critiques being relevant again are a testament to the cyclical nature of humanity, like bellbottoms, hightop fades, and vinyl records. Now if you don't mind, I must iron these JNCO's, times-a-wasting!
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - jterrys 4y ago
    I'm not very familiar with the Lisp environment but what Stallman always argued was the logical conclusion of the current (at the time state) of software freedom and redistribution. Nothing being codified was ripe for abuse and misuse, but because the general community consisted of altruistic "doo-gooders" that reality always seemed very far away.
- Keyframe 4y ago
  There should be an adage, an internet one at least, along the lines of - The older one gets, the more one agrees with Stallman.
  - dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
    Going one step further I will add: the older one gets the more one becomes like Stallman, lol. (I think the reactions of ordinary people to Stallman's views are quite predictable, mention sex and they go bonkers. )
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
horsawlarway 4y ago
My sentiments entirely. I think he's batshit crazy in a lot of ways - but one thing he got dead right was that letting companies put chips inside of devices that don't obey the device owner but the still obey the company is a damned terrible idea for freedom. I've started calling it the "little green man" in the device that only takes orders from the company - not from me. It's insidious, it's harmful, and it's definitely not limited to Huawei or China - governments and corporations all over the "west" are playing with this power, and we're going to get burned.
- amelius 4y ago
  This is why we should demand that after we buy a product, it should be possible to fully use and repair it without contacting the vendor ever again. No tethering by the vendor.
  - alex7734 4y ago
    I'd go further and say that, for general purpose computing devices, it should be possible to fully use, repair and repurpose it without contacting the vendor ever again. That is, bootloader locking and remote attestation should be forbidden by law.
    - tomrod 4y ago
      Mobile phones and similar should be included here.
      - fsflover 4y ago
        Librem 5 and Pinephone are already like this.
- atlasunshrugged 4y ago
  Can you give some examples or links to governments outside of China doing this? What sort of products are they trying to infiltrate?
nabla9 4y ago
People are just noticing how their Twitter timeline changes rapidly. 1. Tweets about Ukraine have radically decreased 2. Elon posts increase even when you don't follow him. I'm not saying it's intentional. It just shows the power of algorithms. They dictate what is and what is not news. Even small tweaks matter.
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  I suspect that twitter mostly slowing Elon is a function of twitter being used mostly to discuss twitter and Elon now. Most people I follow have either stopped tweeting, or largely tweet about Elon. Even popular YouTubers I follow can’t shut up about twitter/Elon. Maybe I’m providing your point by not seeing non-twitter tweets but it feels like Elon starved twitter of real discourse.
  - r00fus 4y ago
    There are lots of people I follow - if I go to their Tweets/Replies "wall" I can see their posts. But they don't show up at all on my timeline (either home or latest tweets). Now, most of these folks are non-mainstream street reporters, establishment-critical types and the like (who Musk has claims are "repressing" him). Most of these folks simply don't care about Elon and just want to geek out about electoral / activism. But I don't see almost any of their tweets in the timeline. If I have to create a List to see all their updates, what's the point of a timeline? (note: when I tried to add a lot of people to a list, Twitter logged me out / locked my account until I did 2FA again - very antagonistic). That's when I decided to leave and haven't gone back since. Mastodon is very quiet comparatively but doesn't smell of Musk.
- nullc 4y ago
  HN feels like every page has multiple elon/twitter stories now. Threads unrelated to elon or twitter, like this one-- have posts like yours. I think this shows the power of fads, not algorithms.
elgar1212 4y ago
RMS foresaw all of this crap happening. This is why his message is probably going to outlive us. I just wish someone would wade through all the crap he wrote and collect all the actually relevant stuff. All the other weird stuff just takes away from the core message of FOSS
- fsflover 4y ago
  tl;dr: non-free software harms your freedom one way or another. Use and support free software as much as you can and even more.

I don't agree with Richard Stallman's political or social views but he was right all along when it came to being wary of software not having the user's best interests in mind.

grobbyy 4y ago

Richard Stallman had extreme Cassandra Complex. Virtually everything he wrote 30 years ago came true (or will soon), but no one believed him.

imachine1980_ 4y ago
the problem is he also have so f**g wrong opinions about so much s*t, but yes when it come to software he was right all the way, that make follow him a mental gymnastics marathon.
- gryf 4y ago
  I haven't followed him for over 15 years when he started branching out from software into other things. What crazy has he accumulated since?
  - heleninboodler 4y ago
    Spoken like a person who has never attempted to give Richard Stallman a parrot.
    - gryf 4y ago
      I just googled that reference. Weugh.
      - heleninboodler 4y ago
        The whole rider is pretty nutty. Even on fairly mundane requirements he manages to sound a bit crazy. "I absolutely refuse to have a break in the middle of my speech. Once I start, I will go straight through." Presumably at some point he said he didn't want to take a break but someone stuck a break in the agenda anyway and he decided to declare his intention to throw a fit if that ever happens again. It reads a little like "100 ways in which RMS cannot handle the unexpected."
- nequo 4y ago
  I'm hoping to see a GPL revival with a shift back from MIT/BSD. But one can hope.
  - ilc 4y ago
    Big corps won't let that happen. They make too much from MIT/BSD. Look at FAANG and other companies' policy towards the GPL and their abuse of BSD, and I think it is pretty clear what's up.
    - nequo 4y ago
      Do you have any links about their BSD abuse? I would like to read more.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
      > their abuse of BSD It's perfect by legitimate to prefer copyleft, but I struggle to take seriously the idea that a license can be abused by following its terms, particularly when the reason people put stuff under permissive licenses is to let anyone do whatever they want with it without giving back.
  - aaa_aaa 4y ago
    How is a totalitarian state's actions are related with MIT/BSD anyway? It is absurd to think that states care about software licenses.
- wazoox 4y ago
  > he also have so f*g wrong opinions about so much s*t Care to provide examples?
- concordDance 4y ago
  Struggled to parse this, but why would it be a problem that he was wrong about things outside his speciality? A professor of astrophysics being "wrong" about his opinions on whether eating meat is ethical says very little about how right he is on exoplanet mass distributions. (I happen to agree with Stallman on his non-software views that I know about, so am a bit curious on what you disagree with)
torvald 4y ago
Hence the fitting subredddit https://old.reddit.com/r/StallmanWasRight https://old.reddit.com/r/StallmanWasRight
jmount 4y ago
The Cassandra point is interesting. I think the loss of freedoms Richard Stallman described were very much what was already happening around in with the Lisp environment. He was correct in saying this would be repeated as software ate the world. So roughly the things he was right about were very hard to prevent. Which is partly why he was right.
- aliqot 4y ago
  Stallman came up in the time of mainframes and dumb terminals; so he had mainframe concerns and mainframe critiques. His relevance now is because we too have shifted to mainframes, but we don't call it mainframe and dumb terminals anymore, we say 'cloud' and 'mobile'. We are rebuilding the future in effigy of our past because it's what we know. Stallman's critiques being relevant again are a testament to the cyclical nature of humanity, like bellbottoms, hightop fades, and vinyl records. Now if you don't mind, I must iron these JNCO's, times-a-wasting!
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- jterrys 4y ago
  I'm not very familiar with the Lisp environment but what Stallman always argued was the logical conclusion of the current (at the time state) of software freedom and redistribution. Nothing being codified was ripe for abuse and misuse, but because the general community consisted of altruistic "doo-gooders" that reality always seemed very far away.
Keyframe 4y ago
There should be an adage, an internet one at least, along the lines of - The older one gets, the more one agrees with Stallman.
- dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
  Going one step further I will add: the older one gets the more one becomes like Stallman, lol. (I think the reactions of ordinary people to Stallman's views are quite predictable, mention sex and they go bonkers. )

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

horsawlarway 4y ago

My sentiments entirely. I think he's batshit crazy in a lot of ways - but one thing he got dead right was that letting companies put chips inside of devices that don't obey the device owner but the still obey the company is a damned terrible idea for freedom. I've started calling it the "little green man" in the device that only takes orders from the company - not from me. It's insidious, it's harmful, and it's definitely not limited to Huawei or China - governments and corporations all over the "west" are playing with this power, and we're going to get burned.

amelius 4y ago
This is why we should demand that after we buy a product, it should be possible to fully use and repair it without contacting the vendor ever again. No tethering by the vendor.
- alex7734 4y ago
  I'd go further and say that, for general purpose computing devices, it should be possible to fully use, repair and repurpose it without contacting the vendor ever again. That is, bootloader locking and remote attestation should be forbidden by law.
  - tomrod 4y ago
    Mobile phones and similar should be included here.
    - fsflover 4y ago
      Librem 5 and Pinephone are already like this.
atlasunshrugged 4y ago
Can you give some examples or links to governments outside of China doing this? What sort of products are they trying to infiltrate?

nabla9 4y ago

People are just noticing how their Twitter timeline changes rapidly. 1. Tweets about Ukraine have radically decreased 2. Elon posts increase even when you don't follow him. I'm not saying it's intentional. It just shows the power of algorithms. They dictate what is and what is not news. Even small tweaks matter.

vineyardmike 4y ago
I suspect that twitter mostly slowing Elon is a function of twitter being used mostly to discuss twitter and Elon now. Most people I follow have either stopped tweeting, or largely tweet about Elon. Even popular YouTubers I follow can’t shut up about twitter/Elon. Maybe I’m providing your point by not seeing non-twitter tweets but it feels like Elon starved twitter of real discourse.
- r00fus 4y ago
  There are lots of people I follow - if I go to their Tweets/Replies "wall" I can see their posts. But they don't show up at all on my timeline (either home or latest tweets). Now, most of these folks are non-mainstream street reporters, establishment-critical types and the like (who Musk has claims are "repressing" him). Most of these folks simply don't care about Elon and just want to geek out about electoral / activism. But I don't see almost any of their tweets in the timeline. If I have to create a List to see all their updates, what's the point of a timeline? (note: when I tried to add a lot of people to a list, Twitter logged me out / locked my account until I did 2FA again - very antagonistic). That's when I decided to leave and haven't gone back since. Mastodon is very quiet comparatively but doesn't smell of Musk.
nullc 4y ago
HN feels like every page has multiple elon/twitter stories now. Threads unrelated to elon or twitter, like this one-- have posts like yours. I think this shows the power of fads, not algorithms.

elgar1212 4y ago

RMS foresaw all of this crap happening. This is why his message is probably going to outlive us. I just wish someone would wade through all the crap he wrote and collect all the actually relevant stuff. All the other weird stuff just takes away from the core message of FOSS

fsflover 4y ago
tl;dr: non-free software harms your freedom one way or another. Use and support free software as much as you can and even more.