Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

RMS: No Radical Changes In GNU Project

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • #21
    Originally posted by euler271 View Post
    yet the fake news media keeps doubling down.
    I read a story today about how the Russian Fake News people and the North Korean Fake News people are joining forces so they both spread the same fake messages.

    Just read the doubling down line and thought it was funny. Not "good joke, ha ha" funny, more like "I was barefoot and stepped in dog poop but there are too many children to yell expletives so I have to laugh it off" funny.

    Comment


    • #22
      I'm VERY glad he's staying!!!

      Now, if only the Hurd would adopt seL4...

      Comment


      • #23
        The more hurd advances, the happier I am for the hurd authors.

        Not that anybody thinks people will be using hurd someday. If they do, it's a very nice design-- if they don't, it's because the design is too ambitious to the point of absurdity. But (jokes aside) maybe they will eventually build an AI to figure out how to make it work. And then (joking now) use it to kick off the singularity.

        It will (I've made quite a few predictions this year, many came true-- I also asked for Stallman to voluntarily step down less than a year ago-- but stay on the board and stay on GNU and I wouldn't have kicked him off CSAIL either... Note if he had, he would be relatively immune to all this now) be necessary to fork the Linux kernel eventually. Maybe not this year, but before most people expect it.

        Comment


        • #24
          Originally posted by adasauce View Post

          I'm still calling for this, its myopic to think this is about a single event. His personality, beliefs, and leadership style can't be "debunked".
          His beliefs and leadership don't need to be "debunked", unless you are threatened by open source software or his relentless attacks on authoritarian practices. His personality, as with many of us, can be abrasive or a hindrance at times. Move along now. Ultimately, this is a great moment to learn from; as he's mentioned, already, creating a plan for succession is never too early. This will, hopefully, ensure that the project lives on for a long time to come.

          Comment


          • #25
            Originally posted by kpedersen View Post

            Haha, I totally forgot about that.

            His unique quality of having zero inhibitions is... refreshing. The FSF and GNU would be losing a great asset!

            Do people really think that someone who does this in public should be held completely accountable for something written (and then later apologized for) on the internet? They should give the poor guy a break quite frankly. No-one is perfect; they should readjust their expectations. Perhaps calibrate them upon our politicians that run the country. All prime examples of honesty and integrity XD.

            Heh, re: politicians ... I'd prefer someone who eats toe fungus over someone who /is/ toe fungus any day!

            Comment


            • #26
              Originally posted by smitty3268 View Post
              What does Stallman actually do these days?

              I'm just curious. It sounds to me like he really just goes around to conferences giving speeches, which shouldn't really be affected one way or the other no matter whether he remains in these groups or not.
              I've always found it a great mystery. Which actually makes a point: the right to be free and not tracked. How does he make money, where does he live, what does he eat for breakfast? Unfortunately, by only using products that respect his freedom, we may never know.

              So I don't really see this as a big deal one way or the other. It's just a Rorschach test for commenters and their politics to comment on and get outraged about (on both sides).
              This is actually a very astute and perceptive comment. How true.

              Comment


              • #27
                Originally posted by GI_Jack View Post
                Mixxed feelings on this, but at this point, I say this is a good thing.

                Not only is Stallman aging, but he hasn't been directly involved in the technical development of GNU in a long time now. In fact he doesn't do much programming anymore. He also doesn't use a GUI or a cellphone, so doesn't really understand probably one of the biggest hurdles of our day, Smartphones, and how they are generally the least Free, without much of the attention of the rest of the community to remedy the situation. Cellphones are quickly becoming the most popular ubiqitous computer used, and certainly most abused. This should be made a bigger priority. We need someone who understands modern priorities.

                RMS did a lot of good. He introduced me and an entire generation of young men to ethics in software, and made sure we had a Free as in beer and as in speech powerful operation system to play around with, along with complete tool kit. The enormous amount of agency that comes with having toolkit and documenation over computing, information, and telecommunications software is immense. Also immense when this platform can be used for other tasks such as writing and proofing essays and stories, recording and editing sound and video, etc...

                The agency of Free software lessened immensely the consumer/producer divide. It allowed anyone to host a website on the internet, and allowed a generation of startups, as well as escape the strict censorship and block of increasingly expensive homogeneous domestic media.

                He did this all, in a decade, the 1980s, when this was extremely unpopular and a lot of old 60s and 70s hackers were cashing in their chips for high paying jobs that eschewed ethics behind faceless corporate entities.

                Like most people from the 20th century, Stallman did in fact hold some objectionable views, but overall the good outweighed the bad. The fact we even have as much of a platform to debate this here, right now on the internet, you can probably give thanks to GNU, the GPL, and GCC which carried a Free and Open internet for decades.
                Well actually, he knows smartphones are chock full of closed source software and other scary bits, which is one of the reasons why he doesn't use one.

                Comment


                • #28
                  Originally posted by Luke_Wolf View Post
                  I personally think Stallman is an absolute dumpster fire of a person and his philosophies are utterly asinine vs those behind permissive licensing. I am firmly in the Open Source rather than Free Software camp, but even I think this is bullshit. If people want to break away from the GNU project that's their prerogative, but I would prefer the toe fungus eater to have stayed in charge of the FSF and GNU. They were ultimately at the end of the day his projects for better or worse and pushing him out is nothing more than a hostile takeover of his organizations.
                  Without the GPL, the Linux kernel would not be as well developed as it is now. The only reason Android and other device manufacturers release kernel source code is because of the GPLv2. No other reason. No other code is released, because it's all permissively licensed and/or proprietary.

                  There's a reason Sony uses the FreeBSD kernel - permissive licensing so they don't have to reveal the code. Has Sony ever contributed anything upstream to the FreeBSD kernel? Does the FreeBSD kernel work stunningly well on AMD CPUs and have amazing support for AMD GPUs? No, because Sony doesn't give a shit. They use GRUB on their internal development models - and they don't ship it on actual consumer models. Because it's GPLv3. So yeah, without the GPL a lot of shit today would simply not be possible or usable.

                  Comment


                  • #29
                    Originally posted by sandy8925 View Post
                    Has Sony ever contributed anything upstream to the FreeBSD kernel?
                    They have submitted many patches to clang (which is permissively licensed).

                    FreeBSD is more than just a kernel and Sony has made many changes that are not relevant. They don't particularly want to maintain niche code paths for Sony.

                    However, even so, sometimes patches are relevant:

                    https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/...ch/013744.html

                    An example AVX patch submitted by Sony.

                    Originally posted by sandy8925 View Post
                    Does the FreeBSD kernel work stunningly well on AMD CPUs and have amazing support for AMD GPUs?.
                    Does Linux? As I recall, AMD is holding out an AMDGPU "Pro" proprietary driver on you guys .

                    The bottom line is, companies do unfortunately get around many of the restrictions of the GPL quite happily. I feel it needs to be modified to weaponize it a little more in the modern world for it to be more effective. I would also like to see AGPL used more.
                    Last edited by kpedersen; 10 October 2019, 03:28 AM.

                    Comment


                    • #30
                      GNU / FSF which has governance, a board and members. All of these people are perfectly entitled to campaign for or against any office-holders, this is how organisations work. From reading lwn forum posts, which has actual senior gnu devs posting, there is indeed disquiet about the project, its leadership and directions, and this has not suddenly emerged. Of course, there is also support, and certainly a lot of respect. I doubt anything dramatic will happen, and the project governance looks strong and credible.

                      However, even if these people were motivated purely because of some non-tech agenda, it's their right, it's their project. It's crazy to support collective software and not support collective decision making. Outsiders don't get a say in any open source project merely by being a consumer of the product, they only listen to contributors, and three cheers for that.

                      Comment

                      Working...
                      X