RMS: No Radical Changes In GNU Project

[timrichardson]

I didn't mean to be condescending. I mean that there are people who really have a stake in a particular project: they spend time, for instance, contributing hours (valuable hours) attending conferences, onboarding new developers or other contributors, attempting to recruit people, and coding, debugging, supporting etc. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. These people, of whom I'm not one, count more than other opinions though, since their views on project leadership and direction are better informed and their contributions mean they face the consequences of their decisions. If the project, through its governance mechanisms, decides to change leadership, or direction, or to take back delegation of authority, then our first instinct should be to respect that decision. I am not paying attention to who writes what in this thread, it's is full of what has become the usual nonsense of jumping at shadows and conspiracies with the whiff of Gamergate. Even worse, it's not at all clear what the accusation of "dishonesty" refers to. They only thing in scope for this discussion should be what the project is doing and why. I hate if when such a good site has comment threads that appear to be Fox News after dark.

It is clear that there are senior people who have misgivings and it is pretty clear that RMS is not perfect, but so far the project appears to be managing it without much disruption. By the way, project contributors are more than just "developers", normally I am careful not to make that mistake, if I got that wrong, please accept my correction.

I also think that free software/open source works because it is pact between contributors. I think mere users are not important players in the economics of these projects.

[moilami]

I didn't mean to be condescending. I mean that there are people who really have a stake in a particular project: they spend time, for instance, contributing hours (valuable hours) attending conferences, onboarding new developers or other contributors, attempting to recruit people, and coding, debugging, supporting etc. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. These people, of whom I'm not one, count more than other opinions though, since their views on project leadership and direction are better informed and their contributions mean they face the consequences of their decisions. If the project, through its governance mechanisms, decides to change leadership, or direction, or to take back delegation of authority, then our first instinct should be to respect that decision. I am not paying attention to who writes what in this thread, it's is full of what has become the usual nonsense of jumping at shadows and conspiracies with the whiff of Gamergate. Even worse, it's not at all clear what the accusation of "dishonesty" refers to. They only thing in scope for this discussion should be what the project is doing and why. I hate if when such a good site has comment threads that appear to be Fox News after dark.

It is clear that there are senior people who have misgivings and it is pretty clear that RMS is not perfect, but so far the project appears to be managing it without much disruption. By the way, project contributors are more than just "developers", normally I am careful not to make that mistake, if I got that wrong, please accept my correction.

I also think that free software/open source works because it is pact between contributors. I think mere users are not important players in the economics of these projects.

Both are important. Users can't use a software what has not been made, and developers can't ever make money with software nobody uses. This is so obvious I almost get head explody writing it.

[GI_Jack]

He doesn't use a phone because he does understand how un-free they are.

Computers today are pretty free because of him. What we needed is him, or someone like him that understands the importance of smart phones and to start yammering about Free Software in Cellphones, like he yammered on about computers 30 years ago

[GI_Jack]

Companies just optimize for profits, they don't bother damaging people, but they don't bother avoiding damage either.

Which is why we can't leave ethics and morality up to corporations. Corporations will only care about their own short term profits, will even do things that destroy their nation, planet, industry, in the long term if left un checked.

The reason computers and the internet is awesome is because other entities than corporations are involved. We have non-profits, governments, and user interests groups, that, thanks to Free software, good sense, and many times good regulation, make the internet a better place.

I'm not saying there is no place for

Now to vent fully I'll leave some random links (sorry for any paywalls):

I don't try to discourage any progress on free software for phones. I don't even try to suggest people to stop using smartphones (at most plead that people stop assuming everybody else should have one or more), basically because being the only one left who is not a retarded peripheral of their phone has the inconvenient of eventually realising you're surrounded by mutually brainwashed fools who just won't listen, but I just try to point out that maybe RMS not using phones is a feature, not a bug.

I understand your frustrations, believe me. I'm not a fan of what the smartphone became. I'll make the argument, its less the phone, and more what is on it. Most of the issue is social networking, and a lot of apps that connect to these monolithic large companies. The ethical lapses can in fact be tied to what made these companies so big.

I for one, love a device that intergrates
* Comms, and is internet connected and will run any comms I need. VoIP, email, signal, phone/txt, IRC, jabber, email, whatever other protocol I use for communications is now mobile.
* Music player. Walkman and CD player are yesterday
* Radionav/GPS - never lost
* Quality Camera/Camcorder - lifes precious moments you are never without a Camera.
* PDA - Notes, Calendar, and my address book is never lost.

Before, that would be easy $1k worth of devices replaced that would be bulky and awkward to EDC all of them.

Facebook abuses your freedoms. Free Software would fix that. Almost completely. Because it was Free, it'd be more transparent, and easier to duplicate and create clones in case it became too evil. It would never get to be so big because it would have never made as much money. A free app would either not spy on you, or someone would just strip out the spy features and re-release it. If it was Free, than open specifications would allow anyone to write a 3rd party secure app.

One of the biggest failures of social networks, is advertising, the carrot with lots of $$$ that encourages the abuse.

[fsfhfc2018]

Companies just optimize for profits, they don't bother damaging people, but they don't bother avoiding damage either.

Your post made lots of good points so sorry to nitpick, but I have to point out that sometimes companies do go after individuals quite aggressively-- not only for things like infringing on copyrights, patents and trademarks, either-- but for simply standing up to them or speaking out. Whistleblowers may get sued, but that is not the only sort of thing they have to worry about from large companies.

[phoron]

Which is why we can't leave ethics and morality up to corporations. Corporations will only care about their own short term profits, will even do things that destroy their nation, planet, industry, in the long term if left un checked.

ACK

I understand your frustrations, believe me. I'm not a fan of what the smartphone became. I'll make the argument, its less the phone, and more what is on it. Most of the issue is social networking, and a lot of apps that connect to these monolithic large companies. The ethical lapses can in fact be tied to what made these companies so big.

Maybe. My intuition is that it is the phone, but I can't prove it, and maybe nobody can because we don't have the parallel universe in which smartphones evolved with fairer software and services.

I can believe companies or CEOs are evil, some of them anyway, even if just by random distribution. Whatever. I just have a hard time believing something as simple
as a corporation can be so clever to mastermind such a mess (I'm not trying to excuse them or diffuse their responsability because once the results are evident they still have the option to just stop their business if they can't fix it). Maybe the results would emerge just from the combination of connecting people beyond their cognitive abilities, offering them pocket computers as cognitive prosthetics, and not giving them the ability to "grow" those prosthetics themselves as they can "grow" their brains, but instead making them dependent on others. That is, if you allow borrowing marxist terminology, "alienating cognition, by separating intellects from their means of intellectual production". You can argue that any computer would do that, but I think the amount of time a day you live with or without a computer can change how dependent on your cognitive prosthetics you are. And mobile device make prosthetics available constantly, leaving no time to grow natural capabilities.

Free software should change something, in that it distributes better the capacity of "growing your prosthetics" yourself. But you still need phone hardware with very centralised production, and unless some big changes in efficiency come around, complex enough services as backends that it may not be viable to have the systems and the administration at home to run them. The software complexity itself makes it hard to keep on top of things even with 100% free software, but it improves much from anything else. It improves parity (no discrimination on who or how many people can undertake the effort to handle that complexity). And it improves knowledge diffusion, fuzzying as much as possible the distinction between users, admins and developers, so that it's harder for ones to impose on others. Maybe the main advantadge is not security, privacy or quality, but just being able to better learn software from free software, and those doing so improving the understanding in society of the compromises involved in each use of computers, or just eroding the blind faith in screens and enabling critical thinking on computing.

Is that enough to offset the connection overload, distractions and trapping people in internet disregarding their immediate environment? Are these factors more or less neutral (maybe just catalyzers for faster change, not necessarily for worse changes than otherwise) and the bad results are just from the abuses of current popular software and service providers ? Maybe. I don't have the expertise to argue it convincingly enough. But I also don't have so much faith in humanity as to think it'll be just fine when free software takes over smartphones.

I for one, love a device that intergrates
* Comms, and is internet connected and will run any comms I need. VoIP, email, signal, phone/txt, IRC, jabber, email, whatever other protocol I use for communications is now mobile.

That implies distractions, hastiness and dependency. And it has the network effect of pushing others to react as fast at any time, never disconnect from job (Blackberry phones were called that as a reference to the ball prisioner forced workers carried attached to their ankles), and increase their emotional dependency on others (which could sometimes be not so good), but decrease their empathy to strangers or less known people in their vincinity. Maybe.

But yes, it has benefits too, and as long as the software makes it easier for the user to control when, how often and how much of their attention the phone requires, it could be manageable.

* Music player. Walkman and CD player are yesterday

Sure, just make sure to hear your environment, specially when driving, cycling, etc.

* Radionav/GPS - never lost

Useful indeed. I've seen younger people unable to take directions to somewhere 3-5 streets from where they are without asking google maps,
but in general I'd said it gives more freedom of movement than it takes.

* Quality Camera/Camcorder - lifes precious moments you are never without a Camera.

I'm not expert enough to know whether those who say one needs a proper reflex camera for any photo worth taking are right or wrong.

I'm a bit worried of the society resulting from people constantly self censoring because they can be video recorded at any moment, so never
really feeling able to let themselves go because someone could take a photo of silly them that can ruin their life later on. I mean silly things,
not crimes. It's like when you can't deviate from norms in silly things you cannot evolve to something outside the norm, which could be terrible but could also be inspiring or just good.

Also a bit worried about people overobsessed about how they look as if they married every single day or something. Might or might not be related to having
a camera always on hand (and others too).

So sure, it's convenient to have a camera when you need it, but it is convenient that everyone and their dog have them too 24/7 ? Bufff...

* PDA - Notes, Calendar, and my address book is never lost.

You can lose your phone just as your notebook or addressbook. But yes, useful, and doesn't look socially dangerous.

Before, that would be easy $1k worth of devices replaced that would be bulky and awkward to EDC all of them.

Sure. And now you have to buy the whole pack when one of them is damaged or no longer fit for purpose.
But I don't mean to say smartphones are not useful. Your preciousss obviously has to offer you some power
in order to in the darkness bind you. But from casually following more open projects to develop phones it looks
like these highly integrated devices imply too much complexiity, and the cost to develop them might not be sustainable
without the privacy invading, advertising, short lived security, dismal repairability, and programmed obsolescence.
Or maybe it just needs a better ecosystem, more time to evolve it, less hardware variability, more critical consumers...
I'm speculating too much.

Facebook abuses your freedoms. Free Software would fix that. Almost completely. Because it was Free, it'd be more transparent, and easier to duplicate and create clones in case it became too evil. It would never get to be so big because it would have never made as much money. A free app would either not spy on you, or someone would just strip out the spy features and re-release it. If it was Free, than open specifications would allow anyone to write a 3rd party secure app.

Sure, Jesus only said "May he who is free from guilt throw the first stone" because he had never met Zuckerberg [cos, yeah, I can smear campaign too].
I just named Facebook because I thought was the easiest to blame, not because I thought other desocializing networks are sane. My point wasn't so much to
criticize here the desocializing networks but to wonder how much the constant influence a mobile device affords them harms people. It was more like "there
are bad things out there, maybe we don't want to live there all day" than "look how bad those things are".

One of the biggest failures of social networks, is advertising, the carrot with lots of $$$ that encourages the abuse.

And yes, free software would solve the spying, no advertising could lessen the addiction.

But I still fear any means that makes people always more connected with distant people in cyberspace than with the human beings in the meatspace around them.
Being occasionally connected with many people in many places is good. Taking all of your time to talk to people you like better than the stranger next to you is
about the opposite of being social. Being always alone is bad. Being never alone (or only when out of battery) is also bad . And I'm here talking to you inter alia because I'm no extrovert. Otherwise I'd be in the nearest cafe meeting someone. But the OLED illuminated zombie faces out there in the tube (underground, metro, U-Bahn, colectivo?) are just weird. Not sure it would look better with just a GNU head logo in the projected screen on their forefront.

Anyway, I don't really know how it would be with free software in mobile phones and federated services, maybe if people are clever enough to switch to free software they'll be clever enough to unzombie themselves. For today I'll just have a bicycle ride to lunch with some old friends (and their smartphones), so I may not fix the world just today either.

Best regards, long live free software, and thank you for your valid points on the bright side of cyberlife.