A search for Richard Stallman turns up stories about him resigning on CNN, Arstechnica, Wired, ycombinator, ZDNet and a bunch of others.
Arstechnica seems to have a note about him coming back. Looks like your "multiple sites" makes it a mostly niche or internal discussion. I.e. nobody cares anymore.
A day later and your comment is already dated. Two days and it's badly out of sync, especially with FSF Europe issuing a statement condemning his return, supporting his removal, and refusing to work with FSF or any of its constituent bodies until he is removed or resigns from any and all leadership positions.
Meh, to my eyes Stallman has always been a political figure. His essays are inflammatory, not just arguing that free software is a good policy but that anything else is immoral. He has followers, many of whom are zealots.
To be fair, he's a politician who puts his effort where his mouth is and actually writes stuff and releases it for free, but his message has always been political and moralistic. Comparing him to Marx is not really such a bad analogy. He got burned by another political, moralistic, crusade. I don't think it was fair, and I think that sort of hysterical witch hunting is terribly damaging to any organization, but I also don't think people who release software without the source code are the spawn of satan.
Pissed off? Most people would be. That's why it's inflammatory. You may recognize that argument from any of a number of other political positions you dislike. It's always been very popular, and it's always been inflammatory.
I tend to agree with Stallman that open source has many very compelling advantages. I don't think you're a bad person if you disagree with me.
It's not like FSF matters -- free software was fine way before the FSF came to be in 1985. The Berkeley Distribution pre-dated FSF by many years, and before that real men used the public domain for free software distribution.
Berkeley Distribution was not free in some sense. You needed a Unix license first before you could use BSD, primarily because so much of BSD was modifications to the AT&T code. 1991 had the first version with most AT&T code removed (Net/2). The first BSD license from of the modern form was 1988.
Sharing of code, especially the non-AT&T part (such as vi) was more open certainly and most people didn't worry about licensing much or cared to read them or whatnot. "Feel free", meaning if you can m
It's hard to say if Linux would have done as well as it did if it were BSD or MIT licensed instead. Honestly I think if GPL didn't exist, that Linus would have leaned towards some kind of low-cost Shareware model. It's not like he was initially all that attached to the idea of free software and GPL, but pragmatism won out.
Free software was dying back in 1985. That's the whole reason the FSF was started in the first place. Sure, the BSD toolchain was semi-free, but it wasn't comprehensive, and nobody really knew the legal status of it given that it needed to run on proprietary Unix and was, in some senses, derived from it. The resources needed to run it, in any case, were well beyond the typical computer user in the mid-1980s. Most computers weren't even powerful enough to run Xenix. And Xenix cost a thousand dollars or more just for the operating system and C compiler. The hardware cost was another $4000-$10,000 on top of that.
It's actually very hard for me to think of many major projects from back at around that time frame that were even source available, let alone free software. The occasional source available stuff was typified by SEA ARC, which came out in 1986, which was source available but not even remotely free software, causing a famous dispute that lead to the creation of PKZip. MINIX came out a year after that, and again, was source available, not free software, despite the author writing it while employed by a University as a teaching OS. And those both postdated the foundation of the FSF. Meanwhile most of the time even freeware wasn't source available.
Why? After all, during the 1970s there was a massive hobbiest interest in microcomputing with a lot of Hippyish individuals giving away everything they created. So what happened? The answer is microcomputing became commercialized. As we moved from expensive open architectures, which even by the second half of the 1970s weren't even 90% open, to cheaper, far more powerful, SBCs, the number of people using them increased dramatically and the proportion that were interested in the tinkering side, compiling their own software etc, reduced dramatically. The only language most computers came with for free was BASIC, which wasn't fast or powerful enough to run significant applications, C compilers, even BDS C, cost money, the free alternatives were too stripped down to be useful (SMALL C etc), and so the demand for FOSS basically died out. Meanwhile there was a high demand for commercial software, and a huge amount of support from the industry for commercial software developers, so people were encouraged to think of the project they were spending time working upon as a product, not a contribution.
There's a good question of whether this might have been reversed naturally as ubiquitous networking started to become a thing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the Internet seriously took off in the mid-nineties, permitting a degree of world wide collaboration that didn't exist before. But at the precise moment the FSF was founded, free software was in retreat. The FSF, and Stallman - whatever his faults - deserves credit for pushing back.
Stallman being unsuitable as a leader for the free software movement is something that saddens me immensely. I hope that he'll always be seen as the major contributor he was to our movement. But like many others have proven over the decades, he absolutely should not be leading it.
I think Coherent was around $200 in the 1980's, and I believe came with a C compiler at that time. It was in some ways better than Xenix and in some ways worse. But it was capable for running control systems, network services, or single user workstations. It obviously wasn't very nice for multiuser on an 8086, but got nicer with 286 and 386 support. That nobody remembers it seems surprising because just about every issue of C User's Journal had an ad in the back for it.
I feel much the same about RMS. He's interesting in a lot of ways, certainly intelligent, and absolutely beats to his own drum. Unfortunately his activist behavior and far left politics undermines much of the good that he's had to say and that he's done over the years.
I don't think you have to agree with him on anything outside his position with respect to FOSS to appreciate it or agree with his positions on that matter. No other person will have their beliefs fully align with your own and I think trying to dismiss or put someone down based on their personal beliefs that they keep out of their professional work and role to be a bit immature.
Would you consider Noam Chomsky less of a brilliant linguist for his personal beliefs which in some areas likely overlap with those of Stallman, yet have no bearing on his work in that field? I don't think I've seen either be particularly pushy when it comes to their personal politics or other beliefs and I suspect they're both intelligent enough to realize that those should be separated out from their other work.
If anything they should be held up as example to others that don't seem to realize that it's possible to have a belief, even one out at the fringes, that doesn't need to be shoved down everyone else's throats or consume your identity as a person. But even if a person wants to make themselves an insufferable waver of some cause's flag, I don't think it undermines their accomplishments as long as they keep their personal beliefs out of their professional capacity.
I don't think you have to agree with him on anything outside his position with respect to FOSS to appreciate it or agree with his positions on that matter. No other person will have their beliefs fully align with your own and I think trying to dismiss or put someone down based on their personal beliefs that they keep out of their professional work and role to be a bit immature.
Would you consider Noam Chomsky less of a brilliant linguist for his personal beliefs which in some areas likely overlap with those of Stallman, yet have no bearing on his work in that field? I don't think I've seen either be particularly pushy when it comes to their personal politics or other beliefs and I suspect they're both intelligent enough to realize that those should be separated out from their other work.
This! so very much this!
We are reaching a weird point where forces are demanding purtiy of thought and ideology that must weigh more important than actual proficiency.
Which by the way, is the exact opposite of meritocracy, where ability is considered in the mix. Where if you wore a sombrero at a sorority party has become a thoughtcrime, that while you might be the best at what you do, your presumed disrespect means that the inlcusive people have the right to exclude you.
And the inclusive crowd is showing them selves to have mandatory political belief tests that are causeinf them to decrease the size of their tent just as the far right's ascendency requires s shrinking tent.
Watch what you say or do or think, because the iclusive people are looking for peoplel to lose their jobs for wrongthink.
And just so we're all clear, I don't care for his politics, or Chomsky's. I do know what happens when a group determines that one's worth is based upon political beliefs and is successful in ridding the undesireables that do not think as prescribed.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday March 22, 2021 @02:32PM (#61186336)
50 years ago, the ACLU and others fought to defend literal Nazis marching to harass minority groups, because they recognized that when society blocks people you don't like, people you do like won't be far behind.
In 2021, Amazon changes its app icon because some snowflake thought it looked like Hitler's mustache. Thanks, progressives!
50 years ago, the ACLU and others fought to defend literal Nazis marching to harass minority groups, because they recognized that when society blocks people you don't like, people you do like won't be far behind.
In 2021, Amazon changes its app icon because some snowflake thought it looked like Hitler's mustache. Thanks, progressives!
Kinda kookoo, isn't it?
Which makes me wonder why their main logo hasn't been canceled, because it looks like a raging circumcised boner.
We're close to an event horizon on this. If anyone with the ability is listening, we need a scientific algorithm to concoct a company logo that doubles as the most dense Rorschach test of ways it can offend someone. The idea being this thought process needs to burn itself out.
Uh, it's an arrow that goes from A to Z, that you saw a 'raging boner' tells me you failed this Rorschach Test.
If it was a Rorschach Test. I thought of sex, while you thought of violence.
Meanwhile that upward arch, and with the rather circumcised looking corona at the top, and it't a weird arrow.
Kind of crazy that you equate Amazon changing it's app icon because it was shit to literal Nazis harassing minorities.
Actually I think that pretty much sums up most complaints about this stuff. It's trivial bullshit that has nothing to do with freedom, hyped up to be a sign of a apocalypse.
Just because some idiot claims to identify with some group doesn't mean they hold any of the values of that group. We usually accept people at face value when they make claims to their political leanings. But if evidence points to the contrary it's time to be skeptical.
"We are reaching a weird point where forces are demanding purtiy of thought and ideology that must weigh more important than actual proficiency."
Why is this weird? It's been the norm for thousand of years. The only real difference now is for once the people in power feeling the effects.
It isn't that I disagree with you. Book banning has been in vogue by both right and left, and I might not that the far left is not in as much a place of authority as they think they are. It's called overreach, which in recent years has caused Republicans a lot of problems.
One of the interesting aspects of this is the Dr Seuss situation. Without saying it is a good thing or not, more than a few on the far right wanted Dr Seuss banned because they believed he was a communist
I think the purity of thought people are an extreme minority and highly wrong-headed. And don't blame this on the left either, remember all those who lost their jobs during the McCarthy witchhunt eras, or those refusing to let someone they suspect is gay from being a teacher. But the human race is also a wrong-headed race when you get down to it, and political correctness occurs no matter what the politics. The human race is also highly hypocritical, unable to see that they never practice what they preach
I think the purity of thought people are an extreme minority and highly wrong-headed. And don't blame this on the left either, remember all those who lost their jobs during the McCarthy witchhunt eras, or those refusing to let someone they suspect is gay from being a teacher.
Make no mistake - I blame both the far left and the far right.
The sad part is that fools like me, who believe that one of the rock bottom truths about cancelling, or banning, or not selling any more because of pressure - is that they do not want something to be known or read. Be it the unsufferable Dr seuss spreading his utter hatred of anyone not white, or the horrible horribe "Inherit the Wind", or "The Color Purple".
I remember as a kid, the older folks from the church, laughing about how the Catholi
Regardless of Mr Stallman’s opinions (many of which I disagree with), the late Mr Epstein’s reprehensible conduct, and the late Professor Minsky’s involvement with him (far from clear), the pedantic comment that got Stallman cancelled was simply mischaracterized or misunderstood by the mob doing the cancelling.
The comment was a last straw on top of a history of sexual harassment Stallman was notorious for, on top of antisocial behavior he was even more infamous for. The people complaining right now that he's back are not complaining because they feel Stallman's opinions of Epstein were "wrong" (and to be honest, I didn't see much mischaracterization at the time, nobody saw Stallman as a supporter of Epstein, they saw him as someone failing to understand the gravity of the situation), but because they believe Sta
There were serious allegations of actual misconduct _after_ Stallman was forced out; I don’t know enough about the specifics to comment, and I wouldn’t have objected if he’d been terminated after due process. As for what happened in the 1990s—I’m not sure I completely agree about “what the creation of the open source movement was,” but that is a separate issue from his more recent premature cancellation.
ESR is just as bad if not worse than Stallman, the man was unabashed racist and fascist. The amount of unwholesome opinions that he holds are numerous.
I don't much care about Stallman's politics outside of software. When discussing software advocacy he is an esteemed subject matter expert and more often than not right. Outside of that narrow topic he's just some dude. An old, weird dude who may be autistic.
But when he talks about software and software freedom I listen. Because he knows his stuff, has a good track record and if for any other reason started the movement and deserves respect.
There is a modern moral panic where people are no longer allowed to have nuanced or complex opinions. The ideas and feelings are strangely reminiscent of past religious moral crusades. I thought we were past it all but just as people can let just a little bit of power go to their heads, it seems when the shoe is on the other foot the cycle starts again.
Its funny when they eat their own. When the twitter inquisition digs up a joke from 20 years ago that was funny then but its offensive now. If it happens to someone who has done unto others, then it couldn't have happened to a more deserving person. Ultimately that will be the downfall of the movement. There will be nobody left to be outraged when everyone has been kicked off the internet.
Its sad when they don't and actually ruin people's lives. The Open Source movement has been dealt some serious blows the last 5 years from many important contributors being kicked out of their own projects by newcomers who's biggest achievement hasn't been submitting any code but has been "growing diversity".
Its sad when they don't and actually ruin people's lives. The Open Source movement has been dealt some serious blows the last 5 years from many important contributors being kicked out of their own projects by newcomers who's biggest achievement hasn't been submitting any code but has been "growing diversity".
Which is why I can't stress enough 1) NEVER Apologize - it won't save you, it will only enable them to victimize you more 2) Adopt a scorched earth policy when possible. Make it clear to all involved you will do you damnedest to make sure they all fail. Expecting you to go quietly into the sunset is not in the carts. You'll sue, you claim exclusive rights any property involved you have and drag everyone else thru the mud as well. None of that will succeed in saving you, it will likely make it hurt worse but a
I'll make a note not to ever work with you on any project. Your'e exactly the kind of person no project needs, because you just admitted you'd be an intentional detriment the second something didn't go your way.
Just say you made a mistake, can we please move on. Putting all your effort into retaliating is just as bad as putting all your efforts into continual denial. Times change, which means standards of conduct change. Stuff that changes though scares a lot of people, they want things to stay the same way forever. It won't happen, you will change jobs, you may have to move, you will get old, your spouse will get old, you will find it harder to pee, and so forth.
Who are these people? Even among the people Slashdotters have some weird "He was 'cancelled' we love him" feelings about, like Eich or the guy who wrote the essay at Google, I don't recall any apologies, I recall them leaving anyway (Eich resigned, of course, but Slashdotters continue to insist he was fired.)
Meanwhile, you know, I apologize for my mistakes all the time. My boss has actually said he trusts me more than many other employees specifically because of that. As far as sexual harassment goes I'v
Its sad when they don't and actually ruin people's lives. The Open Source movement has been dealt some serious blows the last 5 years from many important contributors being kicked out of their own projects by newcomers who's biggest achievement hasn't been submitting any code but has been "growing diversity".
Which is why I can't stress enough 1) NEVER Apologize - it won't save you, it will only enable them to victimize you more 2) Adopt a scorched earth policy when possible. Make it clear to all involved you will do you damnedest to make sure they all fail. Expecting you to go quietly into the sunset is not in the carts. You'll sue, you claim exclusive rights any property involved you have and drag everyone else thru the mud as well. None of that will succeed in saving you, it will likely make it hurt worse but at least you may prevent them from doing it someone else.
You might be failing the "What would this sound like in front of a judge" AND the "What would this sound like when it's brought up at my next job interview" tests. You be you though, don't hold back, and unapologetically speak your mind bro, we need more people like you to come out, so we're not left wondering.
Agreed. A heartfelt apology normally will stop because at that point the morality is back on the crowd. But of course, your apology must be heartfelt and it's clear you understood what you did wrong.
The Open Source movement has been dealt some serious blows the last 5 years from many important contributors being kicked out of their own projects by newcomers who's biggest achievement hasn't been submitting any code but has been "growing diversity".
"Their own" projects? Got examples of that -- and what damage really, to those projects? Logically they must have others working on them to have been removed by their teammates...
You can’t just go and rename the Git default branches on big or small established projects on a whim without reference to the old branch.
This is a separate issue not related to many important contributors being kicked out of their own projects by newcomers who's biggest achievement hasn't been submitting any code..
Those projects actually very well absolutely just can as those developer teams are in charge of their projects, but I do also agree projects with public repositories should not randomly
There is a modern moral panic where people are no longer allowed to have nuanced or complex opinions. The ideas and feelings are strangely reminiscent of past religious moral crusades.
It *is* religion. A set of beliefs that tolerate no dissent, that see the world in stark black and white. Convert or be outcast.
Stallman attempted nuance, he pointed out that accusation is not conviction. He is not a true believer, therefore he is a heretic.
He should never have resigned. At least he has corrected that mi
"The Open Source movement has been dealt some serious blows the last 5 years from many important contributors being kicked out of their own projects by newcomers who's biggest achievement hasn't been submitting any code but has been "growing diversity".
That's because they want to TAKE IT OVER without working. They know they have leverage thanks to "progressive moral panic" and they'll use every bit of it because they know one key fact: They know progressives are utterly vulnerable to purity spirals.
Of course, people should have a right to be root on the system they exclusively own. And if they paid for it, they exclusively own it. Shared systems need a more nuanced approach for the good of everyone using it.
For example, a biologist should understand that humans have two biological genders. If a biologist starts suggesting that it is a good idea to put a child on hormone blockers, causing permanent damage to their brain and body, because there are more than two genders,
An example bad enough to nullify your whole argument. 1. Gender is not biological, sex is. 2. You are conflating metaphysics and ethics. A biologist only needs to believe in the correct things as far as metaphysics goes : reality as it exists. What they think is a "good idea" is part of their ethics, and has no role to play in their worth as a biologist.
Question to a biologist should not be "what is a good idea?". Question should be : what needs to be done to reach this goal.
You can be a good programmer and think the world is flat, sure, but I'm going to implicitly trust your code less.
Libertarian Left was the default transgressive counterculture all the cool kids were into back in my day.
Libertarian Communism, free love gulags and all, is both a contradiction in terms and an apt description for the idealogy being pushed by some aspies I've seen out on the internets and have met in person over the last 20 years.
Like AOC, Matt Breunig, and the Yang Gang telling us all with a straigh face that centralized control and outright ownership of many or most facets of the economy and free monopoly
No wonder you're confused. You have based your opinion as much or more on your fantasy projection as on what any of those people have actually expressed.
"We were essentially thinking about pensions and retirement security," he said. "E.g. economic security for a coal miner who has given 40 years of their life to building the energy infra of this country, but who may be not be willing to switch this late in his career."
So tell me, does your world include a little guy that periodically shouts "The Plane! The Plane!".
Deny the blatantly obvious, amplify the backpedaling and the excuses.
Money for nothing to able-bodied adults of working age isn't money for nothing to able-bodied adults of working age, it's just a pension. An early pension. Just like Chernobyl was just an early completion of the five-year plan for energy generation...real early...like in 85 microseconds.
Wouldn't having a tendency to veer to the extremes make your views on other issues suspect?
No.
In politics, extreme views are unworkable even if they are theoretically correct.
But in other areas of human endeavor, making a clear but unpopular decision is usually better than trying to keep consensus by muddling through the middle.
An extremist C programmer believes array indexes should start at zero. An extremist Fortran programmer believes they should start at one.
So should they compromise and start indexing at 0.5?
His far left attitude lead him to copyleft and lead him to do all the work on GNU that he did. That in turn provided a ready made userland for Linus' kernel to use. Then the combination beat the pants off of the capitalist inspired proprietary Unix flavors.
That huge success story happened in part because people with a good idea didn't have to fork over pallet loads of cash they didn't have or play "mother may I" with a bunch of suits.
I'm not sure it's really politics though. It's software. Or politics about software. I don't know for sure, but I suspect he's, um, a bit on the spectrum in some ways. And not the political spectrum. Software is his thing. He's got a big chip on his shoulder from history in the past with Emacs being commercialized, and combine that with a huge amount of idealism of wanting things to be just right. And those two things alone can explain all his behavior without ever having to bring in a leftist mindse
You both say this, but what are the specific terrible communist views of his that you object to? As I see it, he's a fairly reasonable left-libertarian. Opposed to wars, opposed to censorship, supportive of most sorts of personal freedoms, supports drug legalization, would like to reduce military spending, supports unions, wants a free market economy where we break up monopolies by disproportionately taxing big companies, etc.
It's worth noting that every single one of these policies would be opposed by an a
Also I have absolutely no problem with his brand of communism in software. Intellectual property is an artificial state created construct and would not exist in a free market.
Intellectual property is the artificial mental construct that enables the market (also an artificial mental construct, along with thr concept of currency and enforceable contracts) to exist in the first place.
You don't need to want to Audit The Fed! or insist on me paying you out of the little bag of gold around my neck to believe that property rights are necessary for continued material prosperity.
Intellectual property isn't necessary for there to be property rights and the market existed before government or artificially created property rights. Wherever there is trade there is a market.
That trade used to look like grain in exchange for bread and slaves in exchange for rum.
Fiat currency and fiat property are necessary if you want to grow beyond that by doing things like storing value, pooling resources, and spreading risk in exchange for deferred gratification.
Nonsense. Gold worked quite well for thousands of years of building trade and Bitcoin does everything gold does while patching its flaws. Either way, bread and slaves for rum is still the market at work. Honestly it feels like you are trying expand 'intellectual property' from its actual definition of government enforced artificial monopoly control of ideas to be most any intellectual concept. Governments didn't invent useful thoughts or intellectual concepts with utility, those are not intellectual property
Nonsense. Gold worked quite well for thousands of years of building trade and Bitcoin does everything gold does while patching its flaws.
The gold standard tied our hands and contributed to things like the great depression.
Over the past decade Gold has halved and doubled in value. If our economy had been tied to that, then that would have meant massive inflation and deflation.
Over the past single year, Bitcoin valuation has overall increased by nearly an order of magnitude. That would represent massive deflation. There are intervals over which BTC has went down 25% in value, meaning a pretty big inflationary hit in a crazy small timescale.
Gold didn't work. Coins worked to some degree, and credit worked. Paying for things in gold would be an utter hassle.
Gold works at best as a "settlement layer". And even then, it doesn't really work well if it actually has to work. It works best if people believe it's there, but don't place any particular pressure on it.
It doesn't have to be gold. The Irish apparently kept account in slave girls, even after actually trading in slave girls was not OK.
I recommend the book "Debt: the first 5000 years" by David
The Market isn't some mythical beast that was found in the wild. It is wholly a human construct which has been warped and misshapen by crony-capitalism to the point that it would be unrecognizable to J.S. Mill.
The market is just that, the name for collective trade. It exists as long as there are two humans somewhere in the world willing to swap something. So yeah, it is artificial but then again so long as there are human animals in nature it will occur. Hell you could argue many symbiotic exchanges between non-humans in nature also count as technically count as 'the market.' Bees will trade honey for sugar water even in a wild state of anarchy.
In economics, a market is the abstract concept that describes the properties of that trade. There are formal markets with codified and/or written rules and there are "informal" markets that typically operate outside or the purview or states and governments and may involve illegal trade practices (like leg breaking if you don't pay up) or illegal goods (narcotics, weapons, explosives, sex slaves) that still rely on fiat currency as a medium of exchange.
'a' market is as you describe, 'the market' is a collective abstract term and neither has any sort of requirement for fiat currency to provide the medium of trade.
It's a construct for innovation to fit within the constraints of a market based approach.
I get paid for implementing ideas that once figured out, anyone could freely copy with no investment required on their part. If a company got to pick between paying a guy that *might* come up with a profitable idea or pay 5% of that to just clone an already profitable idea, then the company will never pay for the uncertain, long wait time prospect. Same for books, why pay a writer when you can just copy his works and ig
The problem is the communists and the libertarians go too far in their respective directions regarding intellectual property rights. A middle ground supporting both ip enforcement and a strong fair use doctrine is necessary, but middle grounds tend to be unpopular in politics these days.
"The middle ground happens to be unpopular in politicsamong politicians and ambitious attention-seekers in many institutions of civil society these days" ftfy
Intellectual property is the artificial mental construct that enables the market (also an artificial mental construct, along with thr concept of currency and enforceable contracts) to exist in the first place.
I think he's an absolute Communist, but you gotta give it to the guy: you can't cancel someone who doesn't give a fuck.
The problem isn't cancelling HIM. RMS will always be RMS. The problem is cancelling what he touches, and thus includes the FSF. The board let him go because he was basically causing a huge distraction for the FSF board. Instead of being able to concentrate on free software, the FSF was being inundated with unpleasant associations.
It's already hard enough to promote free software - not just
> Instead of being able to concentrate on free software, the FSF was being inundated with unpleasant associations.
Then perhaps FSF should stop caring about the opinion of some retards online and focus on free software matters. Which is easy to do when you understand that in this world a chunk of the population will disagree with you no matter what you do to please them. The solution is to stop giving a fuck.
Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:5, Insightful)
I think he's an absolute Communist, but you gotta give it to the guy: you can't cancel someone who doesn't give a fuck.
Re:Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:4, Insightful)
Another way to view this is that the FSF has decided that the ship should go down with its captain.
Re:Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:5, Insightful)
Or that the Internet's attention span has been exceeded and nobody cares anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
The response across multiple sites suggests that this is not the case.
Re: (Score:3)
A search for Richard Stallman turns up stories about him resigning on CNN, Arstechnica, Wired, ycombinator, ZDNet and a bunch of others.
Arstechnica seems to have a note about him coming back. Looks like your "multiple sites" makes it a mostly niche or internal discussion. I.e. nobody cares anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
A day later and your comment is already dated. Two days and it's badly out of sync, especially with FSF Europe issuing a statement condemning his return, supporting his removal, and refusing to work with FSF or any of its constituent bodies until he is removed or resigns from any and all leadership positions.
https://fsfe.org/news/2021/new... [fsfe.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah. It definitely blew up. Guess it wasn't the right time to come back.
Re:Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:5, Informative)
Meh, to my eyes Stallman has always been a political figure. His essays are inflammatory, not just arguing that free software is a good policy but that anything else is immoral. He has followers, many of whom are zealots.
To be fair, he's a politician who puts his effort where his mouth is and actually writes stuff and releases it for free, but his message has always been political and moralistic. Comparing him to Marx is not really such a bad analogy. He got burned by another political, moralistic, crusade. I don't think it was fair, and I think that sort of hysterical witch hunting is terribly damaging to any organization, but I also don't think people who release software without the source code are the spawn of satan.
Re: (Score:2)
Sad state of affairs when arguing, with reasoning and logic, that something is immoral is considered "inflammatory".
Re: (Score:3)
"My way is the right and true way and believing anything else makes you a bad person" is an inflammatory argument.
Re: Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You're a bad person because you disagree with me.
Pissed off? Most people would be. That's why it's inflammatory. You may recognize that argument from any of a number of other political positions you dislike. It's always been very popular, and it's always been inflammatory.
I tend to agree with Stallman that open source has many very compelling advantages. I don't think you're a bad person if you disagree with me.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not like FSF matters -- free software was fine way before the FSF came to be
in 1985. The Berkeley Distribution pre-dated FSF by many years, and before
that real men used the public domain for free software distribution.
Re: (Score:3)
It's not like FSF matters -- free software was fine way before the FSF came to be
in 1985
No it wasn't. Back when I got in, Linux and the FSF toolchain was the only practical way to go.
Re: (Score:3)
Berkeley Distribution was not free in some sense. You needed a Unix license first before you could use BSD, primarily because so much of BSD was modifications to the AT&T code. 1991 had the first version with most AT&T code removed (Net/2). The first BSD license from of the modern form was 1988.
Sharing of code, especially the non-AT&T part (such as vi) was more open certainly and most people didn't worry about licensing much or cared to read them or whatnot. "Feel free", meaning if you can m
Re: Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:2)
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It's hard to say if Linux would have done as well as it did if it were BSD or MIT licensed instead. Honestly I think if GPL didn't exist, that Linus would have leaned towards some kind of low-cost Shareware model. It's not like he was initially all that attached to the idea of free software and GPL, but pragmatism won out.
Re:Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:5, Interesting)
Free software was dying back in 1985. That's the whole reason the FSF was started in the first place. Sure, the BSD toolchain was semi-free, but it wasn't comprehensive, and nobody really knew the legal status of it given that it needed to run on proprietary Unix and was, in some senses, derived from it. The resources needed to run it, in any case, were well beyond the typical computer user in the mid-1980s. Most computers weren't even powerful enough to run Xenix. And Xenix cost a thousand dollars or more just for the operating system and C compiler. The hardware cost was another $4000-$10,000 on top of that.
It's actually very hard for me to think of many major projects from back at around that time frame that were even source available, let alone free software. The occasional source available stuff was typified by SEA ARC, which came out in 1986, which was source available but not even remotely free software, causing a famous dispute that lead to the creation of PKZip. MINIX came out a year after that, and again, was source available, not free software, despite the author writing it while employed by a University as a teaching OS. And those both postdated the foundation of the FSF. Meanwhile most of the time even freeware wasn't source available.
Why? After all, during the 1970s there was a massive hobbiest interest in microcomputing with a lot of Hippyish individuals giving away everything they created. So what happened? The answer is microcomputing became commercialized. As we moved from expensive open architectures, which even by the second half of the 1970s weren't even 90% open, to cheaper, far more powerful, SBCs, the number of people using them increased dramatically and the proportion that were interested in the tinkering side, compiling their own software etc, reduced dramatically. The only language most computers came with for free was BASIC, which wasn't fast or powerful enough to run significant applications, C compilers, even BDS C, cost money, the free alternatives were too stripped down to be useful (SMALL C etc), and so the demand for FOSS basically died out. Meanwhile there was a high demand for commercial software, and a huge amount of support from the industry for commercial software developers, so people were encouraged to think of the project they were spending time working upon as a product, not a contribution.
There's a good question of whether this might have been reversed naturally as ubiquitous networking started to become a thing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the Internet seriously took off in the mid-nineties, permitting a degree of world wide collaboration that didn't exist before. But at the precise moment the FSF was founded, free software was in retreat. The FSF, and Stallman - whatever his faults - deserves credit for pushing back.
Stallman being unsuitable as a leader for the free software movement is something that saddens me immensely. I hope that he'll always be seen as the major contributor he was to our movement. But like many others have proven over the decades, he absolutely should not be leading it.
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I think Coherent was around $200 in the 1980's, and I believe came with a C compiler at that time. It was in some ways better than Xenix and in some ways worse. But it was capable for running control systems, network services, or single user workstations. It obviously wasn't very nice for multiuser on an 8086, but got nicer with 286 and 386 support. That nobody remembers it seems surprising because just about every issue of C User's Journal had an ad in the back for it.
Re:Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:5, Insightful)
I feel much the same about RMS. He's interesting in a lot of ways, certainly intelligent, and absolutely beats to his own drum. Unfortunately his activist behavior and far left politics undermines much of the good that he's had to say and that he's done over the years.
Re:Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you consider Noam Chomsky less of a brilliant linguist for his personal beliefs which in some areas likely overlap with those of Stallman, yet have no bearing on his work in that field? I don't think I've seen either be particularly pushy when it comes to their personal politics or other beliefs and I suspect they're both intelligent enough to realize that those should be separated out from their other work.
If anything they should be held up as example to others that don't seem to realize that it's possible to have a belief, even one out at the fringes, that doesn't need to be shoved down everyone else's throats or consume your identity as a person. But even if a person wants to make themselves an insufferable waver of some cause's flag, I don't think it undermines their accomplishments as long as they keep their personal beliefs out of their professional capacity.
Re:Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think you have to agree with him on anything outside his position with respect to FOSS to appreciate it or agree with his positions on that matter. No other person will have their beliefs fully align with your own and I think trying to dismiss or put someone down based on their personal beliefs that they keep out of their professional work and role to be a bit immature.
Would you consider Noam Chomsky less of a brilliant linguist for his personal beliefs which in some areas likely overlap with those of Stallman, yet have no bearing on his work in that field? I don't think I've seen either be particularly pushy when it comes to their personal politics or other beliefs and I suspect they're both intelligent enough to realize that those should be separated out from their other work.
This! so very much this!
We are reaching a weird point where forces are demanding purtiy of thought and ideology that must weigh more important than actual proficiency.
Which by the way, is the exact opposite of meritocracy, where ability is considered in the mix. Where if you wore a sombrero at a sorority party has become a thoughtcrime, that while you might be the best at what you do, your presumed disrespect means that the inlcusive people have the right to exclude you.
And the inclusive crowd is showing them selves to have mandatory political belief tests that are causeinf them to decrease the size of their tent just as the far right's ascendency requires s shrinking tent.
Watch what you say or do or think, because the iclusive people are looking for peoplel to lose their jobs for wrongthink.
And just so we're all clear, I don't care for his politics, or Chomsky's. I do know what happens when a group determines that one's worth is based upon political beliefs and is successful in ridding the undesireables that do not think as prescribed.
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I heard Hitler like cookies.
Therefore, obviously, we all must hate cookies, lest we agree with Hitler.
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I heard Hitler like cookies.
Therefore, obviously, we all must hate cookies, lest we agree with Hitler.
I wonder how your post made it past the Slashdot Code of conduct filter. I generally call him Hister today.
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Did you just assume his gender?
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Did you just assume his gender?
A song from WW2
Whistle while you work
Hitler is a jerk,
Mussolini bit my weenie,
Now it doesn't work.
Re:Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:5, Insightful)
50 years ago, the ACLU and others fought to defend literal Nazis marching to harass minority groups, because they recognized that when society blocks people you don't like, people you do like won't be far behind.
In 2021, Amazon changes its app icon because some snowflake thought it looked like Hitler's mustache. Thanks, progressives!
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50 years ago, the ACLU and others fought to defend literal Nazis marching to harass minority groups, because they recognized that when society blocks people you don't like, people you do like won't be far behind.
In 2021, Amazon changes its app icon because some snowflake thought it looked like Hitler's mustache. Thanks, progressives!
Kinda kookoo, isn't it? Which makes me wonder why their main logo hasn't been canceled, because it looks like a raging circumcised boner.
Which is really sexist.
Re: Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:2)
I thought it was a vagina. They really screwed the pooch on this one.
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Re: Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:2)
I thought it was a vagina. They really screwed the pooch on this one.
Cancel those fuckers! Even stallman knows not to pooch screw.
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Uh, it's an arrow that goes from A to Z, that you saw a 'raging boner' tells me you failed this Rorschach Test.
If it was a Rorschach Test. I thought of sex, while you thought of violence. Meanwhile that upward arch, and with the rather circumcised looking corona at the top, and it't a weird arrow.
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"In 2021, Amazon changes its app icon because some snowflake thought it looked like Hitler's mustache. Thanks, progressives!"
Amazon doesn't have the right to change its own icon?
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Kind of crazy that you equate Amazon changing it's app icon because it was shit to literal Nazis harassing minorities.
Actually I think that pretty much sums up most complaints about this stuff. It's trivial bullshit that has nothing to do with freedom, hyped up to be a sign of a apocalypse.
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Thanks, progressives!
s/progressives/idiots/
Just because some idiot claims to identify with some group doesn't mean they hold any of the values of that group. We usually accept people at face value when they make claims to their political leanings. But if evidence points to the contrary it's time to be skeptical.
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"We are reaching a weird point where forces are demanding purtiy of thought and ideology that must weigh more important than actual proficiency."
Why is this weird? It's been the norm for thousand of years. The only real difference now is for once the people in power feeling the effects.
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"We are reaching a weird point where forces are demanding purtiy of thought and ideology that must weigh more important than actual proficiency."
Why is this weird? It's been the norm for thousand of years. The only real difference now is for once the people in power feeling the effects.
It isn't that I disagree with you. Book banning has been in vogue by both right and left, and I might not that the far left is not in as much a place of authority as they think they are. It's called overreach, which in recent years has caused Republicans a lot of problems.
One of the interesting aspects of this is the Dr Seuss situation. Without saying it is a good thing or not, more than a few on the far right wanted Dr Seuss banned because they believed he was a communist
The problem with the far left'
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I think the purity of thought people are an extreme minority and highly wrong-headed. And don't blame this on the left either, remember all those who lost their jobs during the McCarthy witchhunt eras, or those refusing to let someone they suspect is gay from being a teacher. But the human race is also a wrong-headed race when you get down to it, and political correctness occurs no matter what the politics. The human race is also highly hypocritical, unable to see that they never practice what they preach
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I think the purity of thought people are an extreme minority and highly wrong-headed. And don't blame this on the left either, remember all those who lost their jobs during the McCarthy witchhunt eras, or those refusing to let someone they suspect is gay from being a teacher.
Make no mistake - I blame both the far left and the far right.
The sad part is that fools like me, who believe that one of the rock bottom truths about cancelling, or banning, or not selling any more because of pressure - is that they do not want something to be known or read. Be it the unsufferable Dr seuss spreading his utter hatred of anyone not white, or the horrible horribe "Inherit the Wind", or "The Color Purple".
I remember as a kid, the older folks from the church, laughing about how the Catholi
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Regardless of Mr Stallman’s opinions (many of which I disagree with), the late Mr Epstein’s reprehensible conduct, and the late Professor Minsky’s involvement with him (far from clear), the pedantic comment that got Stallman cancelled was simply mischaracterized or misunderstood by the mob doing the cancelling.
Re: Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:2)
Was the involvement like the Trump/Clinton kind or the Woody Allen kind?
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The comment was a last straw on top of a history of sexual harassment Stallman was notorious for, on top of antisocial behavior he was even more infamous for. The people complaining right now that he's back are not complaining because they feel Stallman's opinions of Epstein were "wrong" (and to be honest, I didn't see much mischaracterization at the time, nobody saw Stallman as a supporter of Epstein, they saw him as someone failing to understand the gravity of the situation), but because they believe Sta
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There were serious allegations of actual misconduct _after_ Stallman was forced out; I don’t know enough about the specifics to comment, and I wouldn’t have objected if he’d been terminated after due process. As for what happened in the 1990s—I’m not sure I completely agree about “what the creation of the open source movement was,” but that is a separate issue from his more recent premature cancellation.
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Re:Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't much care about Stallman's politics outside of software. When discussing software advocacy he is an esteemed subject matter expert and more often than not right. Outside of that narrow topic he's just some dude. An old, weird dude who may be autistic.
But when he talks about software and software freedom I listen. Because he knows his stuff, has a good track record and if for any other reason started the movement and deserves respect.
There is a modern moral panic where people are no longer allowed to have nuanced or complex opinions. The ideas and feelings are strangely reminiscent of past religious moral crusades. I thought we were past it all but just as people can let just a little bit of power go to their heads, it seems when the shoe is on the other foot the cycle starts again.
Its funny when they eat their own. When the twitter inquisition digs up a joke from 20 years ago that was funny then but its offensive now. If it happens to someone who has done unto others, then it couldn't have happened to a more deserving person. Ultimately that will be the downfall of the movement. There will be nobody left to be outraged when everyone has been kicked off the internet.
Its sad when they don't and actually ruin people's lives. The Open Source movement has been dealt some serious blows the last 5 years from many important contributors being kicked out of their own projects by newcomers who's biggest achievement hasn't been submitting any code but has been "growing diversity".
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Its sad when they don't and actually ruin people's lives. The Open Source movement has been dealt some serious blows the last 5 years from many important contributors being kicked out of their own projects by newcomers who's biggest achievement hasn't been submitting any code but has been "growing diversity".
Which is why I can't stress enough
1) NEVER Apologize - it won't save you, it will only enable them to victimize you more
2) Adopt a scorched earth policy when possible. Make it clear to all involved you will do you damnedest to make sure they all fail. Expecting you to go quietly into the sunset is not in the carts. You'll sue, you claim exclusive rights any property involved you have and drag everyone else thru the mud as well. None of that will succeed in saving you, it will likely make it hurt worse but a
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Wow that's terrible advice
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Wow that's terrible advice
1) "To die hating them, that was freedom." -- George Orwell, 1984
2) See number one.
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I'll make a note not to ever work with you on any project. Your'e exactly the kind of person no project needs, because you just admitted you'd be an intentional detriment the second something didn't go your way.
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Just say you made a mistake, can we please move on. Putting all your effort into retaliating is just as bad as putting all your efforts into continual denial. Times change, which means standards of conduct change. Stuff that changes though scares a lot of people, they want things to stay the same way forever. It won't happen, you will change jobs, you may have to move, you will get old, your spouse will get old, you will find it harder to pee, and so forth.
Injustice has existed ever since we crawled dow
Re: Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:3)
As soon as you are on the ground apologizing they start kicking you. All the people who stonewalled #metoo made it out unscathed.
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Who are these people? Even among the people Slashdotters have some weird "He was 'cancelled' we love him" feelings about, like Eich or the guy who wrote the essay at Google, I don't recall any apologies, I recall them leaving anyway (Eich resigned, of course, but Slashdotters continue to insist he was fired.)
Meanwhile, you know, I apologize for my mistakes all the time. My boss has actually said he trusts me more than many other employees specifically because of that. As far as sexual harassment goes I'v
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Its sad when they don't and actually ruin people's lives. The Open Source movement has been dealt some serious blows the last 5 years from many important contributors being kicked out of their own projects by newcomers who's biggest achievement hasn't been submitting any code but has been "growing diversity".
Which is why I can't stress enough
1) NEVER Apologize - it won't save you, it will only enable them to victimize you more
2) Adopt a scorched earth policy when possible. Make it clear to all involved you will do you damnedest to make sure they all fail. Expecting you to go quietly into the sunset is not in the carts. You'll sue, you claim exclusive rights any property involved you have and drag everyone else thru the mud as well. None of that will succeed in saving you, it will likely make it hurt worse but at least you may prevent them from doing it someone else.
You might be failing the "What would this sound like in front of a judge" AND the "What would this sound like when it's brought up at my next job interview" tests. You be you though, don't hold back, and unapologetically speak your mind bro, we need more people like you to come out, so we're not left wondering.
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NEVER Apologize - it won't save you, it will only enable them to victimize you more
Terrible advice. There are lots of examples of people apologizing and resuming their careers. It's the lack of an apology that screws them.
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The Open Source movement has been dealt some serious blows the last 5 years from many important contributors being kicked out of their own projects by newcomers who's biggest achievement hasn't been submitting any code but has been "growing diversity".
"Their own" projects? Got examples of that -- and what damage really, to those projects? Logically they must have others working on them to have been removed by their teammates...
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You can’t just go and rename the Git default branches on big or small established projects on a whim without reference to the old branch.
This is a separate issue not related to many important contributors being kicked out of their own projects by newcomers who's biggest achievement hasn't been submitting any code..
Those projects actually very well absolutely just can as those developer teams are in charge of their projects, but I do also agree projects with public repositories should not randomly
Re: Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:3)
It *is* religion. A set of beliefs that tolerate no dissent, that see the world in stark black and white. Convert or be outcast. Stallman attempted nuance, he pointed out that accusation is not conviction. He is not a true believer, therefore he is a heretic. He should never have resigned. At least he has corrected that mi
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"The Open Source movement has been dealt some serious blows the last 5 years from many important contributors being kicked out of their own projects by newcomers who's biggest achievement hasn't been submitting any code but has been "growing diversity".
That's because they want to TAKE IT OVER without working. They know they have leverage thanks to "progressive moral panic" and they'll use every bit of it because they know one key fact: They know progressives are utterly vulnerable to purity spirals.
They kno
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Of course, people should have a right to be root on the system they exclusively own. And if they paid for it, they exclusively own it. Shared systems need a more nuanced approach for the good of everyone using it.
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Exactly why I am a skeptic of the butt^wcloud.
Re: Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:2)
For example, a biologist should understand that humans have two biological genders. If a biologist starts suggesting that it is a good idea to put a child on hormone blockers, causing permanent damage to their brain and body, because there are more than two genders,
An example bad enough to nullify your whole argument.
1. Gender is not biological, sex is.
2. You are conflating metaphysics and ethics. A biologist only needs to believe in the correct things as far as metaphysics goes : reality as it exists. What they think is a "good idea" is part of their ethics, and has no role to play in their worth as a biologist.
Question to a biologist should not be "what is a good idea?". Question should be : what needs to be done to reach this goal.
You can be a good programmer and think the world is flat, sure, but I'm going to implicitly trust your code less.
Again, "world is flat" is a flaw i
Re:Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps you should separate his views on software from his views on politics.
RMS and the FSF have had a beneficial effect on software.
RMS's views on politics are outside the Overton Window and can be ignored.
Aspies tend to veer to the extremes. We are often either libertarians or commies. That doesn't make our views on other issues any less valid.
Re: Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:2)
We are often either libertarians or commies. That doesn't make our views on other issues any less valid.
Be that as it may, a small but significant number of these people think they can be both at once.
That runs beyond "weird" and "quirky" territory and into "no demonstrable grasp on reality" land.
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That runs beyond "weird" and "quirky" territory and into "no demonstrable grasp on reality" land.
So typical politics then?
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No, Libertarian Left is a thing. There are many good resources on the web that can help you with that. If you don't like google, duck it.
Re: Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:2)
Libertarian Left was the default transgressive counterculture all the cool kids were into back in my day.
Libertarian Communism, free love gulags and all, is both a contradiction in terms and an apt description for the idealogy being pushed by some aspies I've seen out on the internets and have met in person over the last 20 years.
Like AOC, Matt Breunig, and the Yang Gang telling us all with a straigh face that centralized control and outright ownership of many or most facets of the economy and free monopoly
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No wonder you're confused. You have based your opinion as much or more on your fantasy projection as on what any of those people have actually expressed.
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"We were essentially thinking about pensions and retirement security," he said. "E.g. economic security for a coal miner who has given 40 years of their life to building the energy infra of this country, but who may be not be willing to switch this late in his career."
So tell me, does your world include a little guy that periodically shouts "The Plane! The Plane!".
Re: Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:2)
Deny the blatantly obvious, amplify the backpedaling and the excuses.
Money for nothing to able-bodied adults of working age isn't money for nothing to able-bodied adults of working age, it's just a pension. An early pension. Just like Chernobyl was just an early completion of the five-year plan for energy generation...real early...like in 85 microseconds.
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"Aspies tend to veer to the extremes. We are often either libertarians or commies. That doesn't make our views on other issues any less valid"
Wouldn't having a tendency to veer to the extremes make your views on other issues suspect?
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Wouldn't having a tendency to veer to the extremes make your views on other issues suspect?
No.
In politics, extreme views are unworkable even if they are theoretically correct.
But in other areas of human endeavor, making a clear but unpopular decision is usually better than trying to keep consensus by muddling through the middle.
An extremist C programmer believes array indexes should start at zero. An extremist Fortran programmer believes they should start at one.
So should they compromise and start indexing at 0.5?
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His far left attitude lead him to copyleft and lead him to do all the work on GNU that he did. That in turn provided a ready made userland for Linus' kernel to use. Then the combination beat the pants off of the capitalist inspired proprietary Unix flavors.
That huge success story happened in part because people with a good idea didn't have to fork over pallet loads of cash they didn't have or play "mother may I" with a bunch of suits.
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I'm not sure it's really politics though. It's software. Or politics about software. I don't know for sure, but I suspect he's, um, a bit on the spectrum in some ways. And not the political spectrum. Software is his thing. He's got a big chip on his shoulder from history in the past with Emacs being commercialized, and combine that with a huge amount of idealism of wanting things to be just right. And those two things alone can explain all his behavior without ever having to bring in a leftist mindse
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You both say this, but what are the specific terrible communist views of his that you object to? As I see it, he's a fairly reasonable left-libertarian. Opposed to wars, opposed to censorship, supportive of most sorts of personal freedoms, supports drug legalization, would like to reduce military spending, supports unions, wants a free market economy where we break up monopolies by disproportionately taxing big companies, etc.
It's worth noting that every single one of these policies would be opposed by an a
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Also I have absolutely no problem with his brand of communism in software. Intellectual property is an artificial state created construct and would not exist in a free market.
Re: Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:1)
Intellectual property is the artificial mental construct that enables the market (also an artificial mental construct, along with thr concept of currency and enforceable contracts) to exist in the first place.
You don't need to want to Audit The Fed! or insist on me paying you out of the little bag of gold around my neck to believe that property rights are necessary for continued material prosperity.
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Re: Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:2)
That trade used to look like grain in exchange for bread and slaves in exchange for rum.
Fiat currency and fiat property are necessary if you want to grow beyond that by doing things like storing value, pooling resources, and spreading risk in exchange for deferred gratification.
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Honestly it feels like you are trying expand 'intellectual property' from its actual definition of government enforced artificial monopoly control of ideas to be most any intellectual concept. Governments didn't invent useful thoughts or intellectual concepts with utility, those are not intellectual property
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Gold worked quite well for thousands of years of building trade
No, coinage that was made of gold did. Gold was used as a convenient anti-counterfeiting measure. Not because yellow rock good.
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Nonsense. Gold worked quite well for thousands of years of building trade and Bitcoin does everything gold does while patching its flaws.
The gold standard tied our hands and contributed to things like the great depression.
Over the past decade Gold has halved and doubled in value. If our economy had been tied to that, then that would have meant massive inflation and deflation.
Over the past single year, Bitcoin valuation has overall increased by nearly an order of magnitude. That would represent massive deflation. There are intervals over which BTC has went down 25% in value, meaning a pretty big inflationary hit in a crazy small timescale.
On
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Gold didn't work. Coins worked to some degree, and credit worked. Paying for things in gold would be an utter hassle.
Gold works at best as a "settlement layer". And even then, it doesn't really work well if it actually has to work. It works best if people believe it's there, but don't place any particular pressure on it.
It doesn't have to be gold. The Irish apparently kept account in slave girls, even after actually trading in slave girls was not OK.
I recommend the book "Debt: the first 5000 years" by David
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The Market isn't some mythical beast that was found in the wild. It is wholly a human construct which has been warped and misshapen by crony-capitalism to the point that it would be unrecognizable to J.S. Mill.
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Re: Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:1)
That isn't what "market" means.
In economics, a market is the abstract concept that describes the properties of that trade. There are formal markets with codified and/or written rules and there are "informal" markets that typically operate outside or the purview or states and governments and may involve illegal trade practices (like leg breaking if you don't pay up) or illegal goods (narcotics, weapons, explosives, sex slaves) that still rely on fiat currency as a medium of exchange.
Saying "market is just a
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It's a construct for innovation to fit within the constraints of a market based approach.
I get paid for implementing ideas that once figured out, anyone could freely copy with no investment required on their part. If a company got to pick between paying a guy that *might* come up with a profitable idea or pay 5% of that to just clone an already profitable idea, then the company will never pay for the uncertain, long wait time prospect. Same for books, why pay a writer when you can just copy his works and ig
Re: Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:2)
The problem is the communists and the libertarians go too far in their respective directions regarding intellectual property rights. A middle ground supporting both ip enforcement and a strong fair use doctrine is necessary, but middle grounds tend to be unpopular in politics these days.
Re: Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:1)
"The middle ground happens to be unpopular in politicsamong politicians and ambitious attention-seekers in many institutions of civil society these days" ftfy
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Intellectual property is the artificial mental construct that enables the market (also an artificial mental construct, along with thr concept of currency and enforceable contracts) to exist in the first place.
Username checks out.
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The problem isn't cancelling HIM. RMS will always be RMS. The problem is cancelling what he touches, and thus includes the FSF. The board let him go because he was basically causing a huge distraction for the FSF board. Instead of being able to concentrate on free software, the FSF was being inundated with unpleasant associations.
It's already hard enough to promote free software - not just
Re: Gotta admire the man's determination (Score:2)
> Instead of being able to concentrate on free software, the FSF was being inundated with unpleasant associations.
Then perhaps FSF should stop caring about the opinion of some retards online and focus on free software matters. Which is easy to do when you understand that in this world a chunk of the population will disagree with you no matter what you do to please them. The solution is to stop giving a fuck.
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The world overall would be a better place if more of us gave fewer fucks.
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Do people call you a racist, bigot or Nazi often? That might be something you look into.
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I'm a white male and don't get called a racist, bigot, or Nazi often. Maybe you're doing something else that's getting you called these things.