4 ms·
And this is kind of key to the whole argument. It's not just about his behavior and questionable views on consent and age (though those are the disqualifying is
by shadowgovt 2y ago
And this is kind of key to the whole argument. It's not just about his behavior and questionable views on consent and age (though those are the disqualifying issues). Beyond that... The movement is stagnating because its leadership can't compromise and the computing world is moving beyond the era of personal computers and one-org mainframes that Stallman concocted the Four Freedoms in.
How do the Four Freedoms apply when it's not your computer, but a cloud service instead? FSF has struggled to find an answer because it's a philosophically different arrangement than the simpler "I should be able to control my own hardware" argument. Their dominant advice is "Don't use cloud," which is so out-of-touch it's laughable. You might as well tell people in the late 1800s to not use lightbulbs because it gives the electric company too much power over their lives.
- fsflover 2y ago> The movement is stagnating because its leadership can't compromise If you want compromises, join the so-called "open-source" community, full of proprietary blobs. Thanks to Stallman, we have an example of true freedom and a compass showing where to move for it.
- shadowgovt 2y agoCopyleft is a compromise, and one of the most clever, honestly: ideally, the law should compel everyone to have the ability to change the devices they own and directly tell the authors of software that if they try to interfere with that, they can pound sand; their intellectual property rights don't extend to telling other people what to do. It does not. But it does allow for the author to set the terms of the protection of their intellectual property. That's the kind of compromise I'm talking about. And the FS movement hasn't figured out how to recapture that lightning in a bottle for the new Cloud era. Cloud is somewhat incompatible with the hardware-ownership-based philosophy of the Four Freedoms; something new and more fundamental is needed and the calcified, old movement can't seem to find it. And they certainly don't seem to be trying, keeping the old leadership at the cost of turning away new members (with the implication that they value historical accomplishment more than new people). I've seen multiple people suggest that the right solution is to just abandon the FS movement qua the people running it and embrace new approaches; I think there's meat on those bones. It's a longer, harder fight if the old guard is left behind, but if they won't change they can't help.
- fsflover 2y agoWhy do you think AGPLv3 isn't good enough for that? I've never seen Google and Co using it, while small companies do.
- shadowgovt 2y agoI think your statement answers itself.
- fsflover 2y agoNo, it's a win for users that large corporations avoid this license.
- shadowgovt 2y agoMost users use those large corporations. I'm afraid I don't follow your thinking on this topic.
- fsflover 2y agoNothing actually prevents those corporations from using AGPLv3. The are only afraid that they can't create a walled garden with it. So users are protected from that, as designed.
- immibis 2y agoUsers are protected from interacting with the big corporations they exclusively interact with?
- fsflover 2y agoThis particular way of creating a walled garden, which relies on free work of free software volunteers, doesn't work thanks to AGPLv3. Whenever this license is involved, it works.