Is the FSF going to die with him? That's sad to think about.
>>22905Unixsheikh has always been dumb, this post is just generic, run-off-the-mill permissive license proaganda that many BSD users ( including unixsheikh ) propagate. There's some valid criticism in there, but to accept the blogpost at face value, there's lots of things one needs to presuppose that radical left-wingers question.
There is some credence to the idea that we should license permissively because companies will never care and these freedoms might make it easier to petit-bourgs and freestanding individuals to use these softwares.
Another valid criticism would be that permissive licenses serve the devs, not the users, though this dichotomy would be lifted in care the software was easily programmable from the get-go, and would lead the users naturally to programming it. The term for this kind of software is "malleable". Emacs is one such example, but there used to be more such things around. The dev-user dichotomy only serves companies who want their teams of chosen "elite" to develop the their wares in order have control over them, so this kind of software mostly died out.
This lead me to think that social organisation behind the software and the human-computer interaction is want to create is infinitely more important than licensing or contracts. I think we should judge software based on how much (use) value it provides to what kinds of people, and how its development is done. Is the software made by, and for, corporate entities? Does using it make it easier for the local community to do their daily tasks? In my opinion, malleability with out freedom is assholary, and freedom without malleability is mostly doomed to fail, unless it's situated software.
I recommend the following essays and blogposts. They display the struggle for liberatory change, and might give people ideas on how to act.
https://lipu.dgold.eu/free-doesnt-mean-freehttps://gwern.net/doc/technology/2004-03-30-shirky-situatedsoftware.htmlhttps://malleable.systems/https://www.boringcactus.com/2020/08/13/post-open-source.htmlhttps://applied-langua.ge/posts/the-poverty-of-post-open-source.htmlhttps://www.lord-enki.net/medium-backup/2019-09-20_Freeing-software-3e3ede439f20.html >>22938>The term for this kind of software is "malleable". Emacs is one such example, but there used to be more such things around. The dev-user dichotomy only serves companies who want their teams of chosen "elite" to develop the their wares in order have control over them, so this kind of software mostly died out.Another term is "communal computing", see
>>22110I don't remember which video, but Luke Smith once basically made a Ted Kaczynski-ite argument about how if you use software that you don't fully understand and can't maintain yourself, it's not really "open source" in the way that you would hope. You're kind of at the whim of the direction the project takes, so it controls you more than you control it. Thus the motivation to use suckless/minimalist software.
>>22976Yes, communal computing is a great term.
On the whole stack thingy: I don't really like the "primitivist" argument. I think this is a reactionary idea, an idealized, mythical, "simpler" past. It also stems from the myth of the "lone hacker", who is empowered. IMO communities should be empowered instead. A blogpost I really like on the topic is
https://amodernist.com/texts/counterfactual.html . The idea is that personal computing atomizes people, makes them into individuals in the same way as neoliberal ideology likes to imagine people.
>>23006>The idea is that personal computing atomizes peopleFalse, it just gives you autonomy. Personal computing is not contradictory to cooperation. Or what, you want to return to the times of terminals connecting to a single mainframe or perhaps want us to send all our data to third-party remote servers?
>makes them into individualsUghhhh, how many times do I have to say this? An individual is born, not created.
>>23016 (me)
Marxists: "Personal property is not private property."
Also Marxists: "Personal computing is bourgeois individualism."
>>21737 Seeing Stallman without hair is like a bear without hair. Just unnatural, wrong. Hoping he makes a speedy recovery.
>>23006I'm pretty sure Luke Smith is a fascist, so I think your instincts are mostly correct. Small projects can be built by a lone individual, so it make sense that most suckless software is basically just rehashed existing unix utilities. But bigger, meaningfully useful software requires people with different areas of expertise.
>>23038the popularity of linux has come at a massive compromise to the principles of free software. I say this as someone who is relatively critical of stallmanist autism that leads to shit like people saying that the *BSDs aren't free software because of firmware that is provided in the repos despite the linux kernel literally having binary blobs in it (unless you use linux-libre, which hardly anyone does). but there's a huge amount of corpo astroturfing going on with linux, lots of tech companies are deeply invested in trying to push their agenda onto the linux community, and like I said, companies like Google have literally been successful enough at this to get their proprietary binary blobs into the kernel.
you can argue that this is a pragmatic compromise, but if that's the case, then it's contradictory to say this when the official position of the FSF and GNU has been rms's autistic nitpicking about certain competing UNIX-like OSes not being free software despite by default being entirely free with no binary blobs. the hardline FOSS movement has become totally irrelevant and basically provides free labor to tech companies, and I blame a lot of this on rms himself and his cult of personality influence over it.
>>23041linux is the flagship FOSS project and has for a long time been increasingly exploited by tech companies who not only get to profit of the labor of FOSS development but also force themselves into positions of influence within projects like linux so that they can secure positions of entrenched authority. as much as people meme about this for the wrong reasons, systemd is a good example of this: it's become increasingly difficult for linux distributions to work without systemd because so much of the linux desktop has become reliant on it, and this is a project that is explicitly controlled by vested corporate interests. I don't like systemd very much personally, but I understand the value it can provide, but the problem is that there are corporate entities who get involved in FOSS projects and astroturf it by "giving" them "free" development with the intent of sliding projects towards being dependent on their technologies.
it doesn't matter what software is licensed under, corporations will find a way to subvert these licenses and retain control over things they're using and have a financial incentive to have control over. it's otherwise pretty risky to take advantage of all this free labor but be at the whims of unpaid hobbyist developers just making cool shit for themselves. this is fundamentally a problem with the free software movement, especially under rms's leadership, is that the threat of corporate subversion has never been within its scope. as much as leftists want to cope about how FOSS is communism-esque, it's more like history repeating itself with the enclosure of the commons.
there is not, and never has been, any significantly radical politics behind the free software movement, and the blame for this can be placed squarely on rms's leadership, who is at best kind of a weird libertarian or Green Party guy with some demsoc sympathies. this is why, as I said, I don't have any ill-will towards him personally. it's not like he's a lolbert or a nazi or something like a lot of tech people, but he's always been kind of misguided and naive about certain things because he has the autistic tunnel vision. which like, I get it, but it doesn't change the fact that the free software movement is failing to succeed at its own aims. it continues to work on its projects like linux, GCC, and the coreutils, and their labor is taken advantage of by tech companies who don't just "steal" it without contributing anything back (which would be a far preferable option since it's not like there's any scarcity with the products of programming labor) but also try to essentially put themselves into managerial positions. the more hardline FOSS gets, the less it's able to get anything done that matters, and it leads to nonsense like "FSF approved" hardware/distros that are irrelevant to everyone except for people who have fallen for the PURE IDEOLOGY *zizek sniff* of stallmanism.
>>23037>his autistic nitpicking that doesn't actually do anything to advance free software. under his leadership>we've seen FOSS get totally co-opted by corpo software through "open source" shitPick one. The "open source shit" exists precisely because Stallman cannot actually force everyone to promote software freedom, the OSI was basically an external initiative by people unaffiliated wich RMS. RMS has denounced the OSI from the beginning but what do you expect him to do really? Threaten the OSI leadership with suicide bombings?
>>23040>I say this as someone who is relatively critical of stallmanist autism that leads to shit like people saying that the *BSDs aren't free software because of firmware that is provided in the repos despite the linux kernel literally having binary blobs in itIt's not contradictory. If a *BSD or a GNU/Linux installation has no proprietary blobs then they're 100% libre software. If not then they're not, it's just the reality of life (still better than Windows certainly). The FSDG exists purely to promote libre software and the FSF, it doesn't actually tell you what distro is libre and what isn't. Debian is libre and so is Gentoo.
>there is not, and never has been, any significantly radical politics behind the free software movementIt was always a single-issue movement, what did you expect? Its main benefit is providing radicals with the tools to hide from surveillance capitalism and resist the expansion of the Big Tech's proprietary spyware, I never viewed it as actually "revolutionary."
>their labor is taken advantage of by tech companies who don't just "steal" it without contributing anything back (which would be a far preferable option since it's not like there's any scarcity with the products of programming labor) but also try to essentially put themselves into managerial positions>the more hardline FOSS gets, the less it's able to get anything done that mattersAgain, pick one. FOSS becoming more hardline is precisely the response to this corporate influence, it's dialectical, Watson.
>>23045What he stands for in the public eye (what remains of it) and in IT culture these days is basically equivalent to
a) personally not owning slaves
b) not eating meat
c) etc.
Not doing the bad thing won't amount to the replacement of the old system. On the other hand, the nitpicking about what are basically lifestyle choices are exclusionary and deter action. Fits into the "pick your identity" lifestylism of the era.
This is expected, capitalism hijacks movements to the best of its ability, and free software was capitalism-friendly from the start.
>>24777Happy Hacking, tripsman.
>>23067Gentoo is old forced meme now. Install guix, it respects your freedom by default. Stallman, the GNU project, and the FSF approve.
>>24777Alright I'm happy for the blessed autist. He was right about a lot of things. Nature is healing.
>>24778> Install guixGib your comrades a paragraph about it
>>24787 (me)
Other than OpenBSD having proprietary blobs of course. But that's fixable.
>>24782best example of a meme being more informative than any paragraph
>>24784>This made me uninstall Guix.why?
>>21737he just posts a bunch of libshit on his blog anyways. seeing my fat uncle die of cancer while quoting Bill Maher has really destroyed the taboo around the subject to me
it doesn't trigger the Hollywood reflexes in my brain any longer. die you old chomo, dieeee
>>21771excuse what the actual fuck
>>24778>implying gentoo doesn't respect your freedom<it actually doesACCEPT_LICENSE="-* @FREE"
>>25276>consumer movementI don't think running a Tor node counts as consuming
alsoo… stallman status??
>>25283>I don't think running a Tor node counts as consumingI think they mean the
consumer customer rights movement. Which Stallman is technically a part of since he advocates for the rights of software users who are the customers of software distributors.
>>25290I mean yeah true but those who are part of the movement are the ones who are actually writing software + building infrastructure(Tor nodes for example) for those users to use/consume in the first place tho
>>25292lol guess I got baited yet again
>>25294>but those who are part of the movement are the ones who are actually writing softwareWell, if they care about software freedom they're technically activists.
>>25294>lol guess I got baited yet againYou got meta-baited: maybe you got baited, maybe you had legitimate concerns about rms's sanity, who knows? This is an imageboard.
>>25295>Well, if they care about software freedom they're technically activists.hel yeea
>You got meta-baited: maybe you got baited, maybe you had legitimate concerns about rms's sanity, who knows?all of the above, sleep deprivation benefits lel
>>25317nooo dude stay alive, things will get better. smoke a blunt
weed in the meantime
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