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Is Richard Stallman the Enemy of Freedom?

Off-Topic discussions about science, technology, and non Debian specific topics.
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FolkTheory
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#61 Post by FolkTheory »

richard stallman has a beard. your argument is invalid.
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#62 Post by saulgoode »

Primetime wrote:I actually upgraded the release inside Ubuntu to 8.04. ...
You used Ubuntu, admit this, learn from your mistake, and don't repeat it in the future. :)
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FolkTheory
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#63 Post by FolkTheory »

You used Ubuntu, admit this, learn from your mistake, and don't repeat it in the future. :)

he wont be able to since RMS will destroy ubuntu before then or change its name to GNU/Linux/Ubuntu/Some more GNU
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#64 Post by BioTube »

Using text files for configuration is not a sign of primitiveness - Twenty times out of twelve it works a helluva lot better than the Windows registry.


Oh and alphabetsoupbuntu is the buggiest POS I've ever seen outside of Windows.
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dmn_clown
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#65 Post by dmn_clown »

Primetime wrote:You're an idiot.
Your breath stinks.
oswaldkelso wrote: Now there are people that take bsd-style licensed code and effectively close it off to bsd developers by writing a proprietary "wrapper," but that has nothing to do with anyone and everything to do with the BSD developer's choices that are in the spirit of their free software license.
Funny how that works ;)

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#66 Post by FolkTheory »

nobody forces you to use free software...if you wanna use it then play by its rules.
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#67 Post by Damotclese »

L. Ron Hubbard? Is that you? :)

Admittedly I know nothing about the variations and generations of Linux, but I can't imagine that anyone other than some Microsoft corporate criminal would attempt to derail or sabotage a Linux effort. Ego and an attempt to make a name for oneself is a mindset that couldn't succeed at sabotage, but corporate money grubbing criminality certainly could. And does. :?

One of the greatest problems I find with Windows isn't the daily crashing and hanging up, and isn't the daily security failings. I find the spyware attributes of the latest Windows OS's to be the system's worse feature. Microsoft as a corporation is a criminal enterprise in so many ways, and the fact that the criminal corporation spies on its customers and allegedly tracks their Internet usage to even a small degree makes Windows unsavory.

The criminal enterprise's "Genuine Advantage" fiasco is a case in point. That was a massive violation of people's civil rights (regardless of what country they live in.) Nobody gave Microsoft permission to spy on them, or to pretend that they (Microsoft customers) gained anything by being spied upon. The "advantage" was all on the side of Microsoft.

Linux will never die, but with criminal corporations like Microsoft vieing for a monopoly, Linux and other valuable, open sourced OS's are badly needed.

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#68 Post by Primetime »

BioTube wrote:Using text files for configuration is not a sign of primitiveness - Twenty times out of twelve it works a helluva lot better than the Windows registry.
Windows relied on plain text files for configuration in the Windows 3.0 days. They're called INI files. They didn't work very well because programs would create their own .ini files that would litter the system. I've noticed this phenomenon in Linux, too. The files were often poorly ordered, too. They were also hard to update, leading to errors when a part of the system changed (e.g., a font was removed).
Damotclese wrote:One of the greatest problems I find with Windows isn't the daily crashing and hanging up, and isn't the daily security failings. I find the spyware attributes of the latest Windows OS's to be the system's worse feature. Microsoft as a corporation is a criminal enterprise in so many ways, and the fact that the criminal corporation spies on its customers and allegedly tracks their Internet usage to even a small degree makes Windows unsavory.
Windows XP almost never crashes. Windows 98 (and to a lesser extent, 2000) had that problem. The only time I've ever seen XP bluescreen is when a virus messed with my system drivers -- once. And I don't know what you mean by spying. There is WGA, which keeps a tally of Windows customers and prohibits them from downloading non-critical updates. Microsoft has been really nice to pirates. It could disable their computers entirely with WGA, but it only does this with pirated copies of Vista. The pricks over at Adobe are real a**h**s when it comes to piracy and make Microsoft look very favorable by comparison. I am not aware of any tracking of my Internet usage, either. Could you clarify what you mean by that?

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#69 Post by BioTube »

Primetime wrote:
BioTube wrote:Using text files for configuration is not a sign of primitiveness - Twenty times out of twelve it works a helluva lot better than the Windows registry.
Windows relied on plain text files for configuration in the Windows 3.0 days. They're called INI files. They didn't work very well because programs would create their own .ini files that would litter the system. I've noticed this phenomenon in Linux, too. The files were often poorly ordered, too. They were also hard to update, leading to errors when a part of the system changed (e.g., a font was removed).
So an arcane, uncommentable and unmaintainable registry is the way to go?
Damotclese wrote:One of the greatest problems I find with Windows isn't the daily crashing and hanging up, and isn't the daily security failings. I find the spyware attributes of the latest Windows OS's to be the system's worse feature. Microsoft as a corporation is a criminal enterprise in so many ways, and the fact that the criminal corporation spies on its customers and allegedly tracks their Internet usage to even a small degree makes Windows unsavory.
Windows XP almost never crashes. Windows 98 (and to a lesser extent, 2000) had that problem. The only time I've ever seen XP bluescreen is when a virus messed with my system drivers -- once. And I don't know what you mean by spying. There is WGA, which keeps a tally of Windows customers and prohibits them from downloading non-critical updates. Microsoft has been really nice to pirates. It could disable their computers entirely with WGA, but it only does this with pirated copies of Vista. The pricks over at Adobe are real a**h**s when it comes to piracy and make Microsoft look very favorable. I am not aware of any tracking of my Internet usage, either. Could you clarify what you mean by that?
He's a paranoid that constantly rants about our Christofacist society(y'know, the same one that legalized gay marriage in California and wouldn't wait for the people to vote on an amendment to ban it to enforce the ruling).
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Primetime
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#70 Post by Primetime »

BioTube wrote:So an arcane, uncommentable and unmaintainable registry is the way to go?
You don't have to use the registry very often in Windows. There are more dialog boxes for system settings in Windows than in Linux. Most people who use Windows don't even know what it is. Obviously the registry could be improved, but the point I was making was that Windows seems to handle settings in a more-sophisticated way than Linux.

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#71 Post by BioTube »

Primetime wrote:
BioTube wrote:So an arcane, uncommentable and unmaintainable registry is the way to go?
You don't have to use the registry very often in Windows. There are more dialog boxes for system settings in Windows than in Linux. Most people who use Windows don't even know what it is. Obviously the registry could be improved, but the point I was making was that Windows seems to handle settings in a more-sophisticated way than Linux.
'Opaque' is the correct word. Unlike Windows, Linux is not defined by a GUI - there's not even any connection between X and the kernel(whereas the Windows windowing system is IN the kernel). The Linux way of handling things may be more involved, but it's more transparent and therefore more secure. Linux ain't Windows and the Microsoft way of doing things is rarely, IF EVER, the right way. In fact, M$ tends to do things the exact opposite of best practices.
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Richard Stallman enemy of freedom

#72 Post by DrHu »

Primetime wrote:Richard Stallman has portrayed himself as the defender of computing freedom
...
Anytime there is a Linux distribution that might challenge Windows, Stallman seems to go after it. Freespire, openSUSE, and Xandros have all been tarnished by a stigma from paranoid wannabe lawyers like Stallman. They are the easiest to use distributions today and have the newest software packages. However, Linux users are gravitating toward Ubuntu, which needs a lot of work.
Yes his is against drm and various other manufactured rights.
--and is right to point out, just like the BSD group that closed binary files are not only anathema for the health of Linux, but are a potential security risk. No-one except the publisher's know exactly what they do! (Nvidia, ATi) etc.
Not to say we wouldn't use them if that is the only apparent option, and so far for video anyway, it is, since the open source versions don't have the access or the inside knowledge or possibly the resources needed to match the millions that the companies spend on product development.


Richard Stallman enemy of freedom
Nope I don't think so.

He has a personal viewpoint, that he expresses more politically and less about technology, ie Linux, though he does cut in every so often to have his say..

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#73 Post by BioTube »

He's an attention hog that could very well be holding FOSS back. There are ways for open source and proprietary software to place nice together, but he insists on turning everything into an us vs them issue.
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#74 Post by oswaldkelso »

BioTube wrote:He's an attention hog that could very well be holding FOSS back. There are ways for open source and proprietary software to place nice together, but he insists on turning everything into an us vs them issue.
Back from what? I'll give you one thing, there are ways for open source and proprietary software to place nice together, but open scource is not always free. Open standards are what is required.
As far as I'm concerned it is them and us. Them trying to ram their crappy "standards" down our throats, so they can charge us for the privilage of using them.
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#75 Post by BioTube »

Look at Netscape: it spawned Mozilla as a crowdsourced R&D department, an idea that might have gone over well had they not released version 6 using a barely working alpha.
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#76 Post by Lavene »

The 'problem' with people like Stallman, that is people with causes, is that you have to listen to them critically and decide for your self. If people don't question things it quickly becomes a religion. A lot of people listen to Stallman and uncritically and end up as blind followers. They're easy to spot because in every discussion they usually more or less only quotes Stallman. "Stallman says this" or "Stallman says that".

Well, Stallman does a lot of things like attacking <some>BSD (cant remember if it was freeBSD or openBSD) for facilitating the installation of non-free software at the same time as he defends his GNUsense by declaring that installing non-free is up to the user and easy to do. The difference? The BSD manual tells the user how to install non-free, the GNUsense's manual does not.

Personally I agree with a lot of his ideas. Free software is nice. But I find the GPL (current version) too 'tailored'. Freedom is defined in such a funny narrow way that just seem odd to me. And it's important to keep in mind that the GPL, and indeed the entire FSF, is not about the freedom of people but the freedom of *the code*. People often confuse the two but the GPL ensures the 'rights' of the program, it does not ensure your right to do what you want - which is how we usually defines freedom.

Stallman tend to define 'freedom' in strange ways. Like the GFDL that ensured the freedom of documents. It turned out to be too free for him so he decided to allow for sections that could not be changed. Freedom? Not in the eyes of Debian who, and I find this highly amusing, have stuck all the GNU documentation in non-free.

Stallman is not an enemy of freedom but I think it's important that one think for one self. Question things and make up your own mind and you'll discover that the world is not simply black and white.

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#77 Post by julian67 »

Lavene wrote:The 'problem' with people like Stallman, that is people with causes, is that you have to listen to them critically and decide for your self. If people don't question things it quickly becomes a religion. A lot of people listen to Stallman and uncritically and end up as blind followers. They're easy to spot because in every discussion they usually more or less only quotes Stallman. "Stallman says this" or "Stallman says that".

Well, Stallman does a lot of things like attacking <some>BSD (cant remember if it was freeBSD or openBSD) for facilitating the installation of non-free software at the same time as he defends his GNUsense by declaring that installing non-free is up to the user and easy to do. The difference? The BSD manual tells the user how to install non-free, the GNUsense's manual does not.
Well I think you have to listen even more closely and critically than last time :D He certainly didn't attack OpenBSD. What he actually said was that he doesn't recommend OpenBSD to the public. Here is the exact text, the original is found here: http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=119730630513821&w=2

It looks like some people are having a discussion in which they
construct views they would find outrageous, attribute them to me, and
then try to blame me for them.

For such purposes, knowledge of my actual views might be superfluous,
even inconvenient. However, if anyone wants to know what I do think,
I've stated it in various articles in http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/.
In particular, see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.html.

One question particularly relevant for this list is why I don't
recommend OpenBSD. It is not about what the system allows. (Any
general purpose system allows doing anything at all.) It is about
what the system suggests to the user.

Since I consider non-free software to be unethical and antisocial, I
think it would be wrong for me to recommend it to others. Therefore,
if a collection of software contains (or suggests installation of)
some non-free program, I do not recommend it. The systems I recommend
are therefore those that do not contain (or suggest installation of)
non-free software.

From what I have heard, OpenBSD does not contain non-free software
(though I am not sure whether it contains any non-free firmware
blobs). However, its ports system does suggest non-free programs, or
at least so I was told when I looked for some BSD variant that I could
recommend. I therefore exercise my freedom of speech by not including
OpenBSD in the list of systems that I recommend to the public.

I could recommend OpenBSD privately with a clear conscience to someone
I know will not install those non-free programs, but it is rare that I
am asked for such recommendations, and I know of no practical reason
to prefer OpenBSD to gNewSense.

The fact that OpenBSD is not a variant of GNU is not ethically
important. If OpenBSD did not suggest non-free programs, I would
recommend it along with the free GNU/Linux distros.
I think the very first paragraph sums up a lot of discussions about RMS (and many others too). I used to have the impression that RMS was some kind of crazy extremist but when I listened to what he says, as opposed to what people claim he says, I realised he's perceptive, consistent, rational, addresses issues rather than making public personal attacks. Nobody has to agree with him but we can at least assess his views by his own expression of them rather than other people's assertions/allegations/interpretations.

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#78 Post by Lavene »

julian67 wrote:Well I think you have to listen even more closely and critically than last time :D He certainly didn't attack OpenBSD. What he actually said was that he doesn't recommend OpenBSD to the public. Here is the exact text, the original is found here: http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=119730630513821&w=2
Oh well, words... I followed that discussion for days and there were low punches thrown on both sides. Attacked, criticized, "not recommending"... I think if someone prominent out of the blue sent me (or my project) a mail proclaiming they didn't recommended my work I for sure would have felt attacked.

Anyway, my point was the the lines are so fine that they are almost indistinguishable. Two distros with equal ability to run non-free; one is good because the distributor doesn't mention it, one is bad because they mention it. It doesn't make all that much sense to me...

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#79 Post by julian67 »

Lavene wrote:
julian67 wrote:Well I think you have to listen even more closely and critically than last time :D He certainly didn't attack OpenBSD. What he actually said was that he doesn't recommend OpenBSD to the public. Here is the exact text, the original is found here: http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=119730630513821&w=2
Oh well, words... I followed that discussion for days and there were low punches thrown on both sides. Attacked, criticized, "not recommending"... I think if someone prominent out of the blue sent me (or my project) a mail proclaiming they didn't recommended my work I for sure would have felt attacked.

Anyway, my point was the the lines are so fine that they are almost indistinguishable. Two distros with equal ability to run non-free; one is good because the distributor doesn't mention it, one is bad because they mention it. It doesn't make all that much sense to me...
I've revisited that thread, eye popping reading!!! I think there's more personal abuse heaped on one person than in any other thread I've ever seen.

Back on topic: he didn't just post out of the blue, he posted the mail I quoted above because people were misrepresenting his views and then using these misrepresentations as basis for various allegations/attacks etc. It's quite an interesting thread if you can stomach it because it is essentially about the topic of this forum's thread. What I like about RMS's responses to a lot of good points, a lot of strawman arguments and a whole load of personal abuse is that he never gets personal in return, he admits when he makes a mistake and he always clarifies his position where there seems to be a misunderstanding of it (wilful or otherwise). He also says to people who he disagrees with that "I respect your views" and in another place says that if you don't like his views to just ignore him (I'm not sure if this is actually possible though). Anyway it's well worth a read if people have the time and can cut through the vitriol to get at the actual discussion of the issues.

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#80 Post by AdrianTM »

That's not a problem, OpenBSD doesn't recommend Stallman to the public either.
Ubuntu hate is a mental derangement.

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