I did hug him later and he was very sweaty - but we did just traipse across London in a bit of a rush and he was absolutely exhausted.
That was a few decades ago, so perhaps things have changed, but he was well within normal odor back in the early 90s.
A few hours in a row of hearing and typing C-Space C-u 2 4 M-w C-x C-b <RET> C-y C-x C-s is exhausting. It was also amusing (in retrospect) to get a polite-enough admonishment to "don't think about what the keystrokes are doing; please just type what I say" when he could tell that I was slowing down because I was paying too much attention to what the intent behind the keystrokes was.
I ended up doing 4 sessions totaling about 10 hours and when I told him I was quitting, I was apologetic that I felt like I'd wasted his time quitting so soon after starting. His response I can remember to this day and it was something like "Don't worry about it; most people quit after the first session. You helped me out and we'll make sure you get your check."
But what is he known for, outside tech circles, if he is known at all?
When you want to deliver a message, it matters a lot, how you deliver it.
Unfortunately the world doesn't know how to really appreciate people as much when they're alive for some personality types.
I don't know for sure what the movie business will look like in 10 years, but one possibility is that everyone is able to create their own movies just by describing them, and a small number will say some variant of, "Give me a biopic of this Richard Stallman guy. Base it on his wikipedia entry and whatever else you know about him. Make it factual but an action neo-noir; you know what I like. Probably starring an amalgam of Bogart and Mitchum, the rest you can just make up."
I hope it's far in the future, but we'll see how the media spins it when Stallman dies. They can easily sell him up as some Godfather of computers. Or it can just be a small whimper in the corner of HN. I'd still bet on something closer to the former, but it's not a sure bet.
I'd bet less than 10% of professional developers could say who he is, and that a tiny portion of the population has any clue.
There are probably thousands of similarly important/influential people in various subfields that we have never heard of, because they're not our Subfield, and I highly doubt any of those would get a biopic.
Mostly the "superior" ethical stance. You do things this (my) way, then it is ethical and you love freedom or you are not ethical and don't want freedom.
Sorry, but I just have some different opinions about some things, but I rather feel not like working together with people who consider me lower. So the result is not cooperation but lot's of fragmentation in the free software/open source world. I do not think that helped the common cause. Otherwise we would not be where we are. Lots of open source and free software for tech people - everything closed down for ordinary people.
Not to mention the common principles in most free software around interoperability and loose coupling. Apple and Microsoft (and the rest) have less to do on this, because they don't have to make their software nearly as generic. Microsoft famously fixed something in SimCity at the OS level. Google and Facebook don't have to worry about interoperability, which undoubtedly removes a lot of complexity for them. In some ways, free software has a greater burden to carry.
The problem with usability in free software is not one of culture or cooperation, it is one of capital. The fact is, Apple and Microsoft have at this point invested hundreds of billions in finding the best engineers and designers around the world and paying them to focus on polishing their operating system. By comparison, Debian's (very impressive) 3500 or so developers, maintainers, and contributors, are almost exclusively volunteers and working at most part time on their chosen packages.
If you want to see better free software, what I'd suggest to you and everyone else is this:
Next time you want to buy a phone, pick something cheaper, and donate the difference to a developer of free software. If you're an iPhone user and you switch to a Fairphone 5, say, you can throw £600 at someone like Joey Hess, or just pick an organisation that makes good stuff and give it to them if you don't want to find a specific author. Let's remind ourselves that if 1000 people did this, it'd be £600k of funding to improve free software.
Personally, I'd recommend a donation to the NLNet foundation: https://nlnet.nl/
(plug for nlnet, they're currently taking proposals and will fund successful ones: https://nlnet.nl/news/2023/20230801-call.html )
Free software works for devs and geeks, yes and I happen to be one of them. But for common people? Usually not very good, as they don't know the terminal and don't know config files. I know, because I tried to spread linux. It is hard work.
Besides, I recommend servicing the device every so often. People create weird failure modes (putting too many files onto the device, clicking at random in menus). I also recommend setting up a backup.
As a figure of speech: Nobody is expected to service a car on his own. You'll get professional help every so often.
I will try that.
"As a figure of speech: Nobody is expected to service a car on his own. You'll get professional help every so often."
And also windows computers can have serious problems, but usually they are easier to solve for beginners, compared to when I try fix someones linux computer, that has not been updated in a while ..
You're comparing yourselves to a guy who has changed the face of software and privacy, probably forever- his license is quoted to be one of the most important decisions in Linux by Torvalds himself.
> Lots of open source and free software for tech people - everything closed down for ordinary people.
It just wouldn't get made. Software would be worse without OSS because there would be no fire under Microsoft's ass
And how often projects gets reimplemented because people and organisations don't want to have to deal with copyleft.
That was my point, not comparing my hacker skills with RMS which I do not recall having done with any word. I just said, I won't work together with people of your attitude. And I know I am not the only one, see above.
That's strictly about businesses not willing to give back in the way the GPL forces you to. It's nothing to do with how RMS behaves.
Not everyone is a fan of enforcing freedom, as that is a contradiction to some.
Like I said, different opinions. Freedom etc. Not accepted by RMS and co I know. Which is why I will continue to stay away from you.
I mean, how many articles and blogs are there about how to make money with foss and how many desperation and frustration is around that topic? How many games exist, that are donation funded?
I mean, please tell me, I want to publish a game, how could I make money with it with the GPL?
Selling it to only one person, who then can publish the code?
Having the code open, but serve ads or ingame purchases, rewarding addictive behavior? Sounds not so ethical either.
That leaves only donations and traditionally people do not value things they get for free. Some do and I hope their number will grow. But as of status quo the majority does not. Some GPL games I know make money, because they sell at steam and the users do not know they could also download it. Is that really ethical? What other GPL buisness modells exists?
A game is not a professional software, people would be willing to buy support contracts for.
And your proposal for how to make money with such a moneymaker game and the GPL is eventually down the years take on donations and talk at conferences? Was that irony? Then I missed it. Because the context was someone above claimed that it is only the stupid lawers fault, that companies reject the gpl.
I know you mentioned Minecraft, but it's not 2010 anymore. That "poor" indie creator sold off the game for 2.5b dollars and it seems like he still got the short end of the stick given how big the game is.
I'm fine with open source games, but the fact of the matter is that mods need a community and community is hard to build. If you're trying to replicate MC's success, note that it also wasn't made with modibility Orr convinent licenses in mind. You gotta make something appealing first and then you can futz about with nodding support if people bite.
Nah, by that point I may as pitch to some billionaire studio and make a hefty salary that way. Or you know, sell your IP for actual millions if it's that valuable. If "exposure" is the alternate currency I'll happily sell out. I'm not my game IP.
You probably don't think that's a worthwhile ideal, and fine. I'm not here to convince you of my ideals. But your assertion as to the reason behind the increasing prominence of permissive licenses is overly reductive and not true.
In an ideal world sure. But I'm guessing Stallman made this license precisely so people can't "do whatever they want", which from a business standpoint is taking that code, modifying it in-house, and closing it off. Prevent a tragedy of the commons, so to speak.
Stallman didn't approach this as some idealist of "we make great code and everyone will share and progress society". Partly because tbf: open source was a lot harder to doiin his time. He came from an angle of trying to combat proprietary software. That's why he didn't make the MIT license (even if it preceded him, I'm not sure).
Possibly. The push to use MIT/BSD from businesses, however, is very much real. To mention one, Apple methodically purged their OS of pretty much anything GPL. Most businesses involved in opensource insist that everything should be MIT/BSD, and absolutely nothing should even smell of GPL. They certainly don't do it because of philosophical differences.
His operating system, GNU, is the de-facto UNIX implementation and runs many critical systems around the world.
Anyone who claims that the guy is unlikeable has never truly bothered to hear him speak and isntrad relies on what they've been told by malicious actors. Stallman doesn't attack other people or ideologies.
If anything his biggest mistake was using Linux as a kernel for people decided to call the GNU operating system "Linux" and it eventually took most of the funding and development away from the OS and its ideology.
Well, what other kernel could he have used instead? Hurd? And linus is writing code till today and activly leading the developement.
What relevant contributions did RMS made, since gcc and emacs? So do you really think it is accurate saying "his" operating system is so much used today?
Let's be fair here: stall man's last technical contributions were when he was Linus's current age. Some people will code to their deathbed but I don't think that is a requirement to properly champion tech. He's more than paid his dues there.
Tech is relatively young and Stallman is one of the oldest living people left. Older than Gates, older than Jobs if he was still alive today. I see Linus less as a comparison so much as a torch Stallman's generation passed on.
What is plato known for among people who don't give a shit about philosophy?
There are even strong theories connecting early Christianity directly to Plato.
[Before anyone gets offended, this is just a metaphor. Obviously plato had a much more significant impact on the world than RMS did]
I see. Well then, carry on.
But maybe then do not wonder when the rest of the world does not care about software freedom and also don't donate or support it in any way.
Oh and Plato is well known as a philosopher, but yes, most people do not know that he proposed a very totalitarian state and is rather known for platonic love.
I mean, i would more wonder why people would think the rest of the world care about the gnu project's four freedoms or even understand them.
Half the time we can't even get citizens to care about basic things like freedom of speech.
But if you can get them to understand, that open source eventually means consumer friendly, that the device will be fully under their control(no ads, no restrictions) and working if OSS gets more support, they will listen. But since they largely do not know all this, I think it is exactly because most free software preaching evolves only around devs.
His message is pretty much user-centered.
(and programmers deserve good message delivery too)
The only time it's a problem is when an artist doesn't release their music on a certain platform and it's now work to try and go download a second app, make an account, possibly pay a subscription, and THEN listen to the new album. These are the kind of things users actually care about, not whether the app/backend is FOSS or not.
HN is a power user community so it's easy to improperly extrapolate our experiences and what we tolerate to what "normal users" will tolerate.
> who cares that they don't OWN the music anymore?
That's the thing, he is trying to raise awareness on this stuff. I do too.
If people cared, he'd be mostly done with his raising awareness work.
Open source is pretty much a developer issue. Free software, though, is a user issue.
(Of course we often use the terms interchangeably)
This is a good point, and shows why we need people like Stallman to press us on important but unglamorous issues.
These "gross" people are the ones who made overpaid dev positions possible.
Whereas nowadays you can do a few weeks of a javascript crash course and land a $100k job organizing text windows on a webpage for a few hours a week from your bedroom.
No one person knows the entire modern x86 architecture. And ofc those who know a lions share are paid top dollar. Maybe still underpaid for the value they bring to the entire world, but very comfortable.
Don't have much to say about the web dev stuff. Just note that CoL is still kinda crazy in the places with most demand. I'm not gonna say "100k is so hard to live on" like some spoiled CS students but it does cut a lot more into your spending power than you'd expect.
He founded the idea of Free software. Him being "gross" is completely orthogonal. "I would have agreed with the guy who fought against slavery if he didn't pick his nose in public."
Most people don't know what the kernel is, but they do see user space, and that was largely GPLed for a while. I think IBM ran some super bowl ads about how amazing Linux and open source were, about ten years ago.
Also, stuff like raspberry pi and ssh exploits (yes, BSD, I know) also show up in pop culture. The Matrix and Mr Robot come to mind. During the end of the dot com boom, I think people were largely aware that Apache + Linux were what things ran on.
Er... what?
He's known for forcing the name Gnu to be appended to Linux because of some wildly exaggerated claims of ownership.
We're talking about rms, not Linus.
Programs were way simpler, and shipping the source code in paper was the de facto way of distribution.
It's not like he was a wacko around his peers. He just created what seemed a logical step from that.
I'm just sad that there's no young people to pass the torch for when the time comes and the founding fathers are no more.
I feel like back in the day there would have been so many easy wins for modifications. Like how people used to root Android to add screenshot capability.
These days modern software is so extremely sophisticated and refined that I can’t think of anything I could improve for say iOS.
Still love foss, but the idea of “it’s open source, you can improve it yourself any time” has worn off for me.
Apple is ultimately going to work in their own best interest. Their particular brand aligns that with the consumer fairly well, but there will be disconnects.
Yes, it would be very hard. But today it is impossible, so very hard is hardly a complaint you can make in comparison.
Did my other two examples seem more reasonable?
The caveat is that sometimes an initiative can be funded by charity or bounty to keep interest, but relying on generosity for 99.99% of projects is a fool's errand.
That makes it rather easier...
It is a bit like a Linux distro running Steam. Yeah, there are proprietary bits, but the FOSS part naturally happens on the FOSS parts.
All I'm saying is that there's a big difference in jailbreaking an OS when most of the source code of that OS is publicly available for study and experiment. Surely that is not a controversial statement?
When picking a phone I like to see if it's on the LineageOS devices page (you bring up a good point that different variations of the same model aren't equal, definitely watch out for that), as that means both that the bootloader is unlockable and that someone else is already maintaining a ROM for it, and hopefully will for years to come. If I just go after the shiny new hardware, chances are the bootloader is locked and it will never be unlocked, generating e-waste.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt
via
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/201cthe-printer-story201...
> Still love foss, but the idea of “it’s open source, you can improve it yourself any time” has worn off for me.
If you look at major MacOS or iOS releases, you will often see new features being advertised that were copied from FOSS systems that experimented with them and proved them out often many years beforehand.
That is to say: iOS might have the edge on QA, but if you want to have impact and shape the future of how people use computers, contributing in the community is still a good way to do this. And in fact, commercial development tends to rely on this talent pool for survival, as companies do a comparatively poor job in educating new talent. It's where you get people with "job experience" in doing certain things.
I feel like this is a bit of a misperception. Does this historically happen?
It’s not too late by any means, but it’s looking very bleak for Free software with most kids’ computing being smartphones and cloud services via chromebooks.
I definitely agree that the general trend towards less advanced technology will harm that though (some 18yo's don't even know how files work because they just use Mac's Finder), but some cohort of the generation will _always_ be interested in digging deeper.
It perhaps doesn't help that the general attitude of someone in FOSS/tech in general could be perceived by the average person as elitist or exclusionary - I try my hardest to challenge these notions.
(Let's see if one of the other founding members of the new club will read this comment)
It's just like if you tell someone a joke. You can still claim credit for coming up with it, but not to stop its propagation.
In particular, you can still make money as a developer by asking for it upfront, whether from an employer, or patrons, or early access, or whatever model. Similar to how Netflix might pay someone upfront to develop a stand-up comedy special
That said, I basically never seen anyone charge for a distribution. I figured that people think there's no point, so they just don't.
Now, charging for development? That absolutely happens.
I charge for development of (F)OSS. It's my salary. My employer likewise charges the patrons/funding agencies. But we get paid once for the effort, like any usual labor contract. We don't try to get paid again when our past work products are copied.
In the old days, paying a distribution cost was more common for free software, when it actually took effort such as writing and shipping media. This handled the case where someone asked for a distribution, so that sharing did not become a financial burden. It's a mostly obsolete concept now with pervasive internet and many low cost or free hosting options to put content out there at essentially zero marginal cost to deliver copies.
Huh? Finder is the macos equivalent of explorer.exe and it's the GUI for the file system. I assume you're taking about Spotlight which searches the entire file system and the internet much like the Windows start menu.
Anyway people have been making claims like this for as long as computers have been around. Smart people use Spotlight and the start menu because it requires fewer keystrokes than typing full paths or clicking 10 times to navigate a directory tree with Finder. It would be stupid to avoid using the fastest tools available
Ultimately, some people are just not interested in technology or using it efficiently.
https://www.ibisworld.com/us/bed/percentage-of-households-wi...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/748551/worldwide-househo...
I think that's why we don't see many new people flocking to FSF projects.
Perhaps FSF has solved all the problems the community at large deems as worth solving.
It makes me wonder if a new org isn't what we need. I love the FSF and feel they did a tremendous service to the world, but the religious extremism limits their appeal only to true die-hard believers.
Richard Stallman has certainly been successful inspiring Ton and others to do great work and carry the flame! I hope he has access to excellent healthcare, and is as lucky as Ton.
Can we just take a moment to appreciate Ton Roosendaal:
https://www.reddit.com/r/blender/comments/jlaxaf/can_we_just...
"Money doesn't interest me" - Ton Roosendaal interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg
BlenderCon 2020 closing address transcript:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24951703
DonHopkins on Oct 31, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: Can we just take a moment to appreciate Ton Roosen...
It's well worth watching and discussing the entire video, including Ton's introduction and close, bracketing all the amazing contributions by blender artists and developers:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24951550
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEjmbsiflMU
I think he saved the important personal news to discuss at the end, so it didn't distract from the virtual conference's focus on Blender itself, its community, and developers.
Ton is an unstoppable lucky force of nature: First he survived a vicious ceiling attack, now he survived leukemia!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJwG-qt-sgk&ab_channel=Blend...
In the introduction, Ton says that it has been a year of introspection and renewal, and describes how the Blender organization has been restructured.
That's followed by a series of mind blowing videos by a diverse worldwide bunch of talented Blender artists and developers.
In his closing statement, Ton tells what has happened to him in the past months, explains his change of perspective, and the implication and changes at the Blender Foundation.
Ton Roosendaal's BCON2020 Blender Conference closing address transcript:
https://youtu.be/uEjmbsiflMU?t=5427
I think it is a quite common effect in films.
Imagine, you are standing in the middle of a waterfall.
It is noisy, it is messy, it is colorful, it is wet.
You see everything is falling down.
Suddenly stops, the jets are coming down.
You see a bit of splashes.
You are standing there in the darkness.
On a black mirror.
That's how it feels when the doctor tells you that you have leukemia.
On February 24th, this year I was urgently hospitalized because I was developing bruises all over my body.
I started to bleed on my mouth.
The doctor said go to the hospital. Ton, we have to examine you.
At midnight I got the infamous bad news delivery by the doctor that I have acute leukemia of the quite rare kind.
It is called APL, which is not very common, but it is very lethal.
So usually you don't survive two weeks with this, unless, of course, the treatment works.
So that's what happened.
They immediately gave me blood transfusions and chemotherapy, and luckily after a few days I was recovering.
So I quickly moved from the critical phase to the phase of that you may get cured.
Four weeks later I was released from the hospital.
I was strong enough to join the rest of the world in the ... lockdown, staying at home.
After five weeks I had my first bone marrow test, which was extremely good.
And cancer was in remission, the doctor said. We are going to take you to the next phase, to cure you fully.
And that's called the maintenance phase.
Maintenance, right?
Then he said, well ... actually it is 7 months of treatments in which you have to be four months in hospital.
Not full time. But imagine in the afternoon you go to the hospital, they hook you up with the bag of poison, you wait three hours, you get sick, you go home, go to bed, in the morning you feel a little bit better.
And in the afternoon you go back to the hospital.
They hook you up, and you get sick again.
That's for 4 weeks, and then you get 4 weeks to recover, another 4 weeks getting sick, and 4 weeks to recover, another 4 weeks to get sick, another 4 weeks to recover, another 4 weeks to get sick!
It was last Friday, the last of the chemotherapy.
And this morning I went to the doctor again to discuss the tests I had.
And luckily my blood is fantastic, the bone marrow is looking really good, I could be declared cured.
But there was one little test they are still waiting, is the DNA test, which will take another 2 weeks to get.
But the doctor said I shouldn't worry about that.
I'm recovering extremely well.
So basically I've got my life back
So ...
And oh, how much I would have loved to sit together, today, at the conference with everyone because there would have been a conference and we would have thrown an enormous party not this year.
So I'm telling you this because this whole experience has had a profound impact on me, on my personality, on my life of course, plus I had time to think.
And I learned a couple of lessons.
First, getting cancer and surviving it it is not a fight. It is not something you win, something you lose.
You only need one thing. A little bit of discipline of course, to take care of yourself, eat well, do some exercises.
But what you need is luck.
And I was lucky.
I was lucky that science found the right treatment for me.
This is only 15 years old. This treatment for people with this kind of leukemia.
I was lucky to have family, friends around me to stand by.
I was lucky to have a team here in the company to stand by and to have.
Francesco Siddi to replace me for 8 months, doing fantastic job on it.
So I was lucky to live in the Netherlands, where there is a universal health care for everyone.
So there was not a moment that I had to worry about what would the treatment cost, and the doctors didn't have a moment to think other than what can we do for Ton, to help him, to cure him, and to make it as good and easy as possible for him.
So next time if you see people having cancer, don't wish them strength, or in Dutch "sterkte", just say good luck, and I wish you well, or a good day, a good evening.
Other things that I learned was that I want to start taking better care of myself, and I want to, I have a feeling that I was sacrificing myself too much.
So I want to put myself more forward, and also take care better of myself in a way that I can pay myself a little bit better. So I can afford a little house outside of Amsterdam with a garden.
I also mentioned last year that at some moment I have to step aside from Blender, for the future, to allow other people to come in.
And the process is been sped up, but not so much that I want to step down, but to get very strong people around me to help making Blender strong, and keep it strong, and move on, and step forward.
Because the main thing I learned was that I was really really not ready to let that go.
I couldn't let go of Blender, because that' s my life' s work.
Blender is life, right.
Blender is a community.
It is a team of people here.
It is everybody who is contributing.
It's the developers.
The bug fixers.
It is the people that make add-ons.
It is even the people who complain, or the people use Maya and don't like Blender.
It is the forum trolls.
And even the people who want to have the game engine back.
So all of them are the people I love.
And all of them I feel like is my family.
And I would never let go of that family.
So, enough drama, right?
I want to end with a little more happy note.
As you all know 2020 is not very nice.
It is a year that we are going to forget.
But the happy message is that 2020 didn't get me down, and I want to spread that positive vibe with everyone.
So please take care of yourself, take care of each other, and a little bit of Blender.
And I see you next year in Amsterdam, or somewhere else.
Bye Bye!
Hank Green, the YouTuber, said that the thing he didn't appreciate until he had cancer was, how much you want the 40-year-old treatment and not the cutting edge treatment, because the 40-year-old treatment means that you have a cancer which is well understood and very treatable.
golden snippet taken out of context
The internet makes it really easy to purity test a community into an echo chamber. Many people willingly subject themselves to these purity tests to fit in and be part of the community, which is also why we see negative communities tending toward a downward spiral (like any of the 4chan communities) as people walk step by step to more extremism in their views.
What can we expect when most of the internet is paid for by abusing people's vices. The "whales" of the mobile gaming industry exist in other industries too. The majority of alcohol is purchased by a relatively small percentage of consumers - meaning the alcohol industry's main source of income is people so addicted they drink as much as they can, regardless of consequences.
When your money is made because people can't help themselves, that's blood money. It's not surprising that a society which tolerates (and encourages!) companies to pursue blood money would likewise have other moral failings, including a tendency to separate into tribes and attack different tribes.
yes there are; but also not really.
due to my age cohort I'm see my self as this "next generation" software scientist/engineer who is aware and believes in FOSS and "liberty minded software";
I suppose most of use are millennials but the whole generation-label stuff is not accurate so maybe in the USA this next gen of people are a bit older but in other poorer countries they're younger???
in any case I think a lot of younger engineers got swayed away from the FSF/GNU ideological stuff by means of 'being pragmatic' which is just a consequence of when the open source movement distinguished itself as different from the free software.
I think the impact of this may have something to do with leidenfrost's appraisal that there's no next-gen to pass the torch to.
it seems like us millennials do not rally, we don't come together into any kind of social movement or dunno.
TBH I would put Drew DeVault in this category.
> Fuck Richard Stallman and his enablers, his supporters, and the Free Software Foundation’s leadership as a whole. Shame on you. Shame on you.
(He uses the word fuck in that post five times.)
Drew has done some great work in OSS but he has a history of going after people he doesn't like in a very vicious way. You can't really behave like this and be a leader. A leader needs to unite not divide. For all the criticisms leveled against Stallman he saved most of his vitriol for the enemies of OSS. If everything he wrote had been as personal and expletive-laden as what Drew writes the FSF would not have gotten very far.
I wish I can be one of those young people who can be a worthy successor to Richard Stallman. I already am to a great extent, preferring FLOSS whenever possible (with an unfortunate exemption for video games, especially many PC and all console games).
My primary issue is now trying to find like people who are also into FLOSS as much as I am, and they're not as common as tech illiterate people are. Maybe someone can advise me on how I can get started (online or local around the Houston, TX area).
An important thing RMS did was producing good software along with his advocacy. For example, even though it's inferior to vim (joking), it was and is a killer app. What RMS didn't write himself, he helped to drive and organize, and ended up as a force behind some of the most important tools we still use today, like gcc.
For RMS it was pretty obvious where the needs were. Today it's much less so, but if you want to make a big difference and start a name for yourself, I would probably look for areas where there aren't great FLOSS options and try to take on one of those. It will be challenging no doubt.
My best advice (take with a grain of salt as I'm not the next RMS which is where you want to be), keep preaching the gospel of FLOSS! Help people find and use software (and hardware) that respects their freedom! Pay attention to users that you teach, and identify usability issues that hurt adoption and work to fix them. Be "that guy" that people call when they have a problem and need a solution.
Time and time again showed me why free and open source software is important, but they keep lagging behind their competitors in term of funding.
I wouldn't be able to use Word attachments (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html)
I wouldn't be able to use Windows (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/upgrade-windows.html)
I wouldn't be able to package useful non-free software for my Linux distro (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/compromise.html)
I would have to call the Linux distro a "GNU/Linux distro" (https://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html)
I would have to ideally stop, but at least reduce, my usage of WhatsApp, Facebook, Slack, etc. (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/saying-no-even-once.html)
These are just all-in-all minor examples I could find in a couple of minutes on gnu.org. I remember reading much more radical takes by Stallman and his companions, but would have to spend more time searching for them.
During the civil rights movement black people were encouraged to not use the buses while segregation was in place. You'd be the guy complaining about how difficult it would be to get around without the bus.
Sometimes the way forward involves going back to fix the wrongs of the past. People like Stallman see the world from a higher dimension. He isn't living on flatland like you and me. There is no world where proprietary software and computing freedom can coexist. If there was you can bet Stallman would be advocating the shortest path to such a world.
> While the Free part of FOSS is being substituted by “(just) open source” and “source available”
The OSD is very much compatible with the FSFs list of freedoms.
“Source available” is a new name for “shared source” and is fake open source proprietary trash.
But in practical terms, it is too complicated (ethics!), so all is down to copyleft or not, which I believe is what the parent comment was referring to.
Perhaps that's what we should be using: copyleft vs open source, instead of free software vs open source.
Unless I misunderstand them, what about using the actual definitions?
- Proprietary software can be closed-source or source-available
- Open-source software can be under a permissive or copyleft license
- Free software is a philosophy around open-source software, but in practice FOSS and OSS are mostly the same thing.
A permissive licence doesn't really transmit the intent of the author, philosophy or not (it doesn't really matter, the licence is the same).
A copyleft licence, on the other hand, backs the philosophy behind free software via the actual licence.
But you are right, it should be "copyleft vs permissive open source".
Global warming is one ecological problem out of dozens and we'll economically outscale it even if we don´t do anything special about it. Damage to human health and infrastructure plus spending in adaptation will be a steady drag that will be much slower than our increasing ability to withstand its effects.
In the meantime, we have tons of global and local issues caused by human activity that have next to nothing to do with global warming: destruction of natural habitats; invasive species; overfishing; plastics; toxic and/or long life chemicals/medicines... We have a couple of resource issues coming up: cobalt, helium, rare earths; hydrocarbs; hell even copper might become a problem soon-ish... We are faced with the effects of being able to reliably control our own reproduction, a revolution that we're absolutely not ready for as a species and that requires us to rethink a 100.000 years old societal structure pretty much from scratch. We will soon have the technology to concentrate power and security into the hands of an ever-shrinking minority pretty much to the point that any violent rebellion of any amount of normal people will fail. Again that's a first for any social species.
This isn't new. Read up on the dark ages, and how Gutenberg ended them with the printing press. As technologists, the best thing we can do is figure out how to build technology that scales down enough to be wielded by individuals. That includes education and media distribution technologies.
Also, climate change models that estimate economic damage project annual damage from extreme weather exceeding global GDP in a few decades. Humanity will probably survive, but its unclear that anything resembling the modern economy will.
But has any other license had the same impact as GPL?
Has any other set of OSS tools enabled so much as the GNU command line tools which were (and are) the foundation of Linux?
I put him up for the night once. I'm a BSD guy, ran the local FreeBSD society. He was pleasant enough about BSD we could hang out a bit. I know what my preferences are, but I'm not so arrogant as to believe I'm anywhere near in a majority, and his influence through his work (including GNU), is completely obvious. Without him, we'd all be paying Microsoft, Sun, IBM or HP through the nose for licenses to much worse technology than we have today.
He once got irritated with me in an email because I wouldn’t do something (release one of my old Lisp books under a FSF document license), but I happily accepted that irritation because I understand where he was coming from.
Richard, get well.
The whole point of the GPL was to empower users, and it's pretty clearly failing at that. SaaS providers provide access to GPL software, but users can't decide which version to run, or move their data, or even use an old version of the software if the new one comes with unreasonable restrictions, surveillance clauses, or unreasonable price tags. At this point, FOSS isn't even free-as-in-beer for most people.
On top of that, Red Hat has basically said they're not going to abide by the GPL any more. They're taking third party code, modifying it, distributing binaries, and if you exercise your rights under the GPL, then they'll stop giving you access to the code or the binaries.
Ironically, BSD and Apache licenses seem to be better at preserving user freedom at this point. They allow commercial distribution on hardware and as a SaaS. GPL 3 forces *aaS business models in practice.
I hope RMS makes a quick recovery, but I'm pretty bummed about how the GPL has played out at this point.
For one thing, it would mean that I'd have to pull my kids out of school, pull my money out of the bank and cancel all of my utilities.
Heck, I'd need the equivalent of a degree in tax accounting just to avoid being jailed by the IRS, since I wouldn't be able to use tax software. (Not that this would matter, since I have to use *aaS stuff to pay my mortgage and insurance and collect my paychecks, so my taxes would be simpler next year.)
Even if I somehow managed to connect to the Internet without indirectly paying for a SaaS, I wouldn't be able to browse it in practice without agreeing to ToS contracts from companies I haven't even heard of.
Don't agree with the cloudflare, google and aws ToS agreements? Try blocking all their servers (since continuing to use the services implies agreeing to continuously-updated ToS terms). If you succeed, you'll find that the internet doesn't work at all. You can't even use email normally, since it's unclear what addresses get routed through which service providers, and what terms you have to agree with to "use" their SMTP services.
Anyway, as for the rest, you can pay mortgage by check in the US. No software required.
You can also file your taxes by paper.
As far as connecting to the internet, Stallman somehow manages it, I'm sure you can sort it out.
How does he do that? Even Google didn't want to take the time to battle ISPs.
The private schools, supplementary education and home school resources I know of all operate web sites, including online registration, emails with parents, and so on. The Amish fought this battle in the 1950's and lost badly. The compromise was that Amish kids don't have to go to high school (whether that's private, public, or home-schooling):
https://groups.etown.edu/amishstudies/social-organization/ed...
> Anyway, as for the rest, you can pay mortgage by check in the US. No software required.
To process the check, my bank has to have an ACH backend. That's a software service. I can't run my own, and it's likely using GPL software.
> You can also file your taxes by paper.
The IRS does not accept cash unless you call them first (requires a phone, which is a service), or pay at a retail partner (likely also requires use of some sort of service or agreement to a ToS. Plus, payments are limited to $1000.): https://web.archive.org/web/20230514105205/https://www.irs.g...
Also, I don't think there's any way to get them to mail you your refund in cash.
How do you suggest downloading and printing IRS forms and reading the directions explaining how to fill them out (and which forms you need) without using their website (and therefore third-party services)?
> As far as connecting to the internet, Stallman somehow manages it, I'm sure you can sort it out.
The last time I checked, he borrowed internet access from universities and strangers. He slept on couches to avoid agreeing to hotel contracts, but I think ultimately ended up compromising his principles by purchasing commercial airline tickets.
Also, I'm not a celebrity, so it would be harder for me to get random people to let me sleep on their couch.
> While the Free part of FOSS is being substituted by “(just) open source” and “source available”,
Free software and open source are the same category of software and licenses (except for sporadic instances that are at the very edge of that one category, as categories tend to be blurred).
Software that is merely source available, of course, is not FLOSS by default. But I don't actually see free software being replaced by software which is just source available.
There are companies trying to push source available proprietary software as "open source", perhaps hoping for such replacement, and this has had some success in some specific areas, but the open source community is pushing against it. Or, at least, the wise ones in it are.
GP here. I agree. I should’ve worded it better to say that a lot of “*source” terms are used to make it seem as if the publishers are meeting a great ideal (like FLOSS), but are muddling things more and more. I shouldn’t have listed “source available in the very same sentence” without being clear. I don’t have stats, but “open source” and similar terms have been used as buzzwords for marketing while the publishers really want their SaaS to be the one people ultimately pay for and use.
I agree we need passionate people working tirelessly for software freedom.
The broader free software community agrees we don't need people like him though.
From Wikipedia:
> The FSF board on April 12 [2021] made a statement re-affirming its decision to bring back Richard Stallman.
> Multiple organizations criticized, defunded and/or cut ties with the FSF, including: Red Hat, the Free Software Foundation Europe, the Software Freedom Conservancy, SUSE, the OSI, the Document Foundation, the EFF, and the Tor Project.
For those out of the loop, the Richard Stallman had repeatedly defended adults having sex with children over many years and he most recently said sex slaves aren't raped.
We need absolutists like him who go to extremes and are known widely. For a few moments, leave aside his personality and what people have said about his behavior or hygiene. If he hadn’t been there, our world would’ve been a lot different and a lot poorer. A visionary is what he was and is.
While the Free part of FOSS is being substituted by “(just) open source” and “source available”, while DRM goes deeper into our lives, and while everything is becoming a “hosted service”, one can only hope for (and put efforts into) going back to the ideals he proposed and pushing back on the elements that control us and seek to do even more so.
We all don’t have to be absolutists (it comes at the cost of convenience, which most people prefer), but there are enough of such people around the world as far as FOSS is concerned. Whenever I see FOSS meetups and people connecting over it, that’s something I’m grateful for and wholeheartedly support (though I’m not one of them).