RMS Talks Net Neutrality, Patents, and More 165
alphadogg writes "According to Richard Stallman, godfather of the free software movement, Facebook is a "monstrous surveillance engine," tech companies working for patent reform aren't going nearly far enough, and parents must lobby their children's schools to keep data private and provide free software alternatives. The free software guru touched on a host of topics in his keynote Saturday at the LibrePlanet conference, a Free Software Foundation gathering at the Scala Center at MIT.
link would be nice (Score:1)
Weird
Re: link would be nice (Score:1)
This is why there is no link.
http://libreplanet.org/wiki/GNU30/RMS_30th_anniversary_address
Presumably it's not something he said in the keynote.
Re:link would be nice (Score:5, Informative)
Re:link would be nice (Score:4, Funny)
Heh. They put him in the "Open Source Development" category. He's going to just love that...
Here's a link (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a transcript: http://libreplanet.org/wiki/GN... [libreplanet.org]
And an article written about the keynote: http://www.networkworld.com/ar... [networkworld.com]
(Thanks to 2 AC's for pointing these links out.)
The whole event was recorded and streamed, so the keynote video should be available some time soon.
(I can't see any reason why the article summary didn't include the link.)
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It is ironic this is on Youtube since that was what RMS explicitly told you *not* to do.
On the other hand, if one would follow *all* the rules RMS has, well...
Word missing. (Score:3)
But Facebook can be useful: Are you too happy? Is it uncomfortable being happier than everyone else? Do you want to be miserable like everyone you see around you?
Facebook has an answer. Read Facebook use predicts declines in happiness, new study finds. [sciencedaily.com] Or download the scientific paper. [plosone.org]
Re: encrypt on machine A for xmission on system B (Score:2)
Subject line says it all.
The link? (Score:1)
Any link? Who are these "editors"? What a piece of shit this website has become :-)
What kind of bullshit submission is this? (Score:1)
I mean, seriously? No link to the keynote or to any article discussing it?
This place is really turning into a crapfest thanks to the silly editors...
Link? Story? (Score:2)
This is just a headline. Is there a link to an actual story?
Where's the article? (Score:5, Funny)
RMS Should Try Google+! (Score:4, Funny)
I saw some (i'm assuming) teenager post some angsty thing on a social page the other day and it occurred to me that we built this huge network that lets you reach out and speak to basically any other human being on the planet and people seem lonelier than ever. Odd, how that works...
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It's like an anti-social network! If you had some data you wanted to make sure no one would ever see, you could post it to Google+!
I saw some (i'm assuming) teenager post some angsty thing on a social page the other day and it occurred to me that we built this huge network that lets you reach out and speak to basically any other human being on the planet and people seem lonelier than ever. Odd, how that works...
Getting a message out that can reach many, applies to few, and will be enjoyed by fewer is not the same thing as being truly understood and appreciated by someone who is willing to invest in a meaningful relationship. It's been framed into your standard quantity vs. quality affair.
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All working to plan. Troublemakers will become lonely in accordance with the system. Thought leaders will be promoted.
The term with which I'm more familiar is "opinion leaders". But to expand on your idea, "the system" isn't the communications medium so much as the prevailing social norms and expectations. Being "different" in terms of which soda to drink, which football team to root for, or which major party to vote for will be celebrated and encouraged. Any serious questioning of anything more fundamental than that would make one a deviant, viewed (at best) as odd or eccentric and likely faced with the "loneliness" yo
Where's the link to the article? (Score:4, Funny)
Is that it? (Score:2)
Re:I know I'll get flamed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Stalman has done a lot, but sometimes his ideas get in the way of actual software. Hurd? after decades still not shipped. gcc? Got out of hand until it got taken over by egcs.
That makes no sense. His idea was to have a 100% free unix. They started working on the hurd. Then Linux came along and it was under an acceptable license, so RMS declared that the problem was solved, GNU had the kernel it wanted and so developing one was no longer a priority.
Likewise ECGS (Experimental GNU Compiler System) was a fork of GCC it proved substantially better, so the FSF abandoned the mainline and adopted the superior fork.
In other words, I think both examples you've given of RMS getting in the way are actually examples of exactly the opposite.
Re:I know I'll get flamed... (Score:4, Insightful)
Stalman has done a lot, but sometimes his ideas get in the way of actual software. Hurd? after decades still not shipped. gcc? Got out of hand until it got taken over by egcs.
That makes no sense. His idea was to have a 100% free unix. They started working on the hurd. Then Linux came along and it was under an acceptable license, so RMS declared that the problem was solved, GNU had the kernel it wanted and so developing one was no longer a priority.
Likewise ECGS (Experimental GNU Compiler System) was a fork of GCC it proved substantially better, so the FSF abandoned the mainline and adopted the superior fork.
In other words, I think both examples you've given of RMS getting in the way are actually examples of exactly the opposite.
It does take a certain humility to abandon what may very well have been a project dear to one's heart, in order to advance a larger goal that will benefit more people. What's more typical is to see Not Invented Here and other forms of pride get in the way of what should be a technical decision. The very idealism that draws so much (mostly useless) criticism to this guy (from people who haven't contributed a fraction of his works) is his best feature.
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That makes no sense. His idea was to have a 100% free unix. They started working on the hurd. Then Linux came along and it was under an acceptable license, so RMS declared that the problem was solved
However Linux isn't about Free Software and it doesn't assign copyrights to the FSF (so it will forever be GPLv2) so even though RMS is all upset about Tivoization it will continue to exist for Linux because Linus disagrees with RMS and sees Tivoization as a good thing because the philosophy of Linux is about sharing of code, not "freedom".
The world changed, we got more embedded systems and highspeed broadband which allowed for SaaS, the FSF copyright assignment meant these could be addressed with updated l
RMS's ego isn't as big when one examines evidence (Score:5, Interesting)
Looking at the kerfuffle around LLVM/Clang you can find more of the same attitude from RMS [gnu.org]—he doesn't have the ego invested in the work as his detractors claim he does (often without examples cited at all, sometimes as with the grandparent poster with wrong examples cited):
Those aren't the words of someone who places ego above the good of the project or the public. For software freedom seekers, software freedom and defense of software freedom is the goal and good for the public.
Re:I know I'll get flamed... (Score:4, Insightful)
But I disagree with the having Stalman as the locus of free software. There was free software before him (BSD, etc) and will be free software after him. Maybe capitalize it right. Yeah, he created the Free Software Foundation. Just call it that.. godfather of the FSF.
Stalman has done a lot, but sometimes his ideas get in the way of actual software. Hurd? after decades still not shipped. gcc? Got out of hand until it got taken over by egcs. Was also the "Cathedral" in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" as the example of what NOT to do. emacs? Witness the hassle with xemacs and emacs.
I believe Stallman is credited for this because the average user never heard of Open Source or Free Software until the arrival of the GPL and its enabling of systems built with the Linux kernel and GNU userland. Now that those have arrived and taken off, the corporate investment in open source software has increased tremendously and most people have at least heard of Linux even if they don't personally use it. Lots more people at least use some kind of open source software even if they are not programmers and don't appreciate what this means, e.g. Firefox, much of Android and its apps, many servers run Linux, etc. These things are all based around the GPL.
One could speculate that what the movement really needed was more ubiquitous Internet access, of course, but for whatever reason, FOSS and similar ideas were completely unknown to average users until the GPL took off. That's why Stallman receives this kind of credit. You also have to admire a guy when most criticisms against him boil down to "you are too much of a purist" which can be restated as "you are too consistent [for my liking/convenience] with your stated principles". He contributed not just a license that really facilitated worldwide collaboration, but also a consistent, well-articulated set of principles based on his best understanding of freedom; and he actually got many people to listen to them. That's an accomplishment all by itself.
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The world could have collaborated and built the modern Internet just fine on BSD licensed software, which is itself a variation of public domain. What Stallman deserves credit for is inventing the Copyleft license as a way to compel source code sharing. He's stayed relevant beyond that as source for paranoia about software being used against people, a stance that looks more prescient each year.
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True, but the nature of collaboration with BSD software would have been much more enterprise-y and committee-centered.
The idea of grass-roots FLOSS development only happened after Stallman's ideals of "giving back to the community" spread around with strong guarantees that their contributions would remain open, which didn't happen with the "public-domain-but-not-qu
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That grass-roots FLOSS development only happened after the GPL does not mean it was necessary to create it, nor even caused directly by it. Giving away free software to promote consulting and support revenue can be a profit center independently of other motives. I can easily imagine an alternate 2015 where there was no Stallman, so instead consulting companies shared boring infrastructure code to split its development costs.
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The world could have collaborated and built the modern Internet just fine on BSD licensed software, which is itself a variation of public domain. What Stallman deserves credit for is inventing the Copyleft license as a way to compel source code sharing. He's stayed relevant beyond that as source for paranoia about software being used against people, a stance that looks more prescient each year.
The BSD license very well could have worked, in the sense that I know of no law of physics or any other hard barrier making it impossible, yes. But generally to get something like what we've seen from the GPL Open Source movement, you need some kind of hedge against total selfishness. This is particularly true when dealing with corporations. That's the one thing the BSD license does not provide.
Perhaps in a more ideal world that does not still have such a pronounced scarcity mentality, the BSD license wo
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Good old dictionary.com says paranoia is baseless or excessive suspicion of the motives of others [reference.com]. There are a few examples where I think Stallman is excessively paranoid. I personally like using the web only over e-mail [stallman.org] to avoid "survellance". Wander that deep down the rabbit hole, and the all powerful three letter agencies out to get you will also have secret exploits for Lynx. Seriously, it's all in the Snowden documents! And I totally did remember to take my medication!
However, there are way less e
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I urge you to consider that Occam's Razor does not apply in the social realm, where motives are often hidden. This makes "paranoia" difficult to distinguish from "foresight".
In my personal unqualified opinion, it's like using alcohol. If there is no sign that it harms your well-being or reduces the quality of your life, then you do not have a problem. If there are such signs, then you do. In the absence of such signs, I would call it "caution".
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You make it sound as if it was a coincidence that FLOSS took off at the very precise time that the GPL was created. It was not. The GPL is different from other permissive licenses in that it perpetuates the openness of the system it's used in; therefore it has a natural mechanism for survival of the
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Rather than call it pure coincidence, which I deliberately and knowingly stopped short of saying, I was implying that it is not. I simply didn't care to get into the minutia of precisely how that happened and what the exact sequence of events were, since my point did not depend on the details, only on the truth that things happened in this manner.
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for whatever reason, FOSS and similar ideas were completely unknown to average users until the GPL took off.
It wasn't entirely clear that source code could be copyrighted until 1980 (see history [wikipedia.org]), shortly before the creation of the GPL. So that is probably why.
Re:I know I'll get flamed... (Score:5, Insightful)
There was free software before him (BSD, etc) and will be free software after him.
RMS did not invent free software. But he was the first to espouse the philosophy of free software, and argue that it was an ethical and moral issue. He also made huge practical contributions. If you run Linux, you are likely using a lot more code written by RMS than by Linus.
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RMS did not invent free software. But he was the first to espouse the philosophy of free software, and argue that it was an ethical and moral issue.
That's really the part that hasn't taken off though. Even Linux - Free Software's biggest claim to fame - is about open source and code sharing rather than the ethics and morals of the FSF.
This is something they knew, GCC could have easily had a license term (just like the GPL has with library linkage) that the input to it must be GPL-compatible and as such could only be used for Free Software but they didn't because people are more interested in getting things done than aligning with the FSF's philosophica
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No one considers using fucking Android to be "running Linux" in the common sense.
Well what is "running Linux in the common sense"? If what you're saying is that GNU/Linux has a lot more GNU in it than non-GNU/Linux then that's obviously pretty redundant and makes no point at all.
Similarly, I don't "run Linux" when I use the seat-back terminal on a Virgin America flight or when i turn on a router.
Well that's not a personal computing sense, it isn't your computer but on a smartphone or a tablet it absolutely is. So which of the following is "running Linux in the common sense" and why: Ubuntu, Ubuntu Phone, Maemo, ChromeOS, Android?
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Father? no. Godfather? sure why not.
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BSD was free before that. Since the 70's. BSD used to pass tapes around to a lot of Universities. They'd add things, and then pass the tapes back. Sneakernet opensource.
AT&T sued to make it not free. But just because AT&T wanted to shut it down, doesn't mean it wasn't free software in spirit at the time. You can think of the BSD lawsuit as validating BSD, and free software (no capitals) as well.
Linus didn't think it wasn't free, but didn't want to deal with the mess. The original F.U.D.
Am I Doing It Right (Score:2)
Is this where a helpful /.-er is supposed to post a link to TFA?
Hmmm .... (Score:1)
Is there an actual story here? Like anything with a link?
Or do we just get a one line snippet that says "RMS says Facebook evil 'n Stuff".
Come on guys ... two sentences and no links. That's not an actual "story".
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http://www.networkworld.com/ar... [networkworld.com]
RMS Speech??? (Score:1)
And the link to his speech is where??? Please provide the link(s) to a video or text copy of his speech.
Thank you!
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Don't worry, they're saving you a lot of unneeded grief. RMS is a troll.
Oh RMS... (Score:1)
Need a standards based Facebook replacement (Score:2)
Facebook solved the problem of contact management very nicely. I remember the days of sending mass emails to all your contacts with new contact information... unless you manually updated your contact database then it was over and you didn't have great control over who's emails you would see and you couldn't discover old friends online...
To retain some small semblance of our privacy though we really need a set of Internet communications protocols for updating and managing address books and some sort of open
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Oh, come on, if you could replace FB with an alternate service, it would be like DOTA being as popular as WoW ... um. Err.
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Finding people is what directories are for. Pictures, Location, affiliations... whatever people want to put out there. And what is to prevent a standard protocol for people to share their friends lists with their friends?
If you want to get rid of Facebook (have it go the way of MySpace -- remember them?) without replacing it with the next centralized panopticon, what you need is a completely standardized, completely open, secure, encrypted, cross-platform, peer-to-peer method of implementing the same features. Nothing less will do. Until then, when Facebook finally diminishes it will simply be replaced by the next Facebook-wannabe.
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And who is going to pay to set this up and fund the day-to-day running of this operation?
I assume it will be the same sort of people who paid (i.e. their time and expertise) to create and make freely available other software like BitTorrent, the Linux kernel, the Apache server, etc.
There is ample reason to believe this is possible. There are numerous extant examples, far too many to enumerate here, in the form of just about every GPL'd project ever created. Perhaps you missed the part where I said it would need to be decentralized and peer-to-peer, so much like BitTorrent, the users themselve
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> I remember the days of sending mass emails
So Facebook solves the "problem" of spamming your friends. NICE.
In other words, it doesn't solve any real problem at all and if anything just enables those that abuse the shared infastructure.
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> I remember the days of sending mass emails
So Facebook solves the "problem" of spamming your friends. NICE.
In other words, it doesn't solve any real problem at all and if anything just enables those that abuse the shared infastructure.
It isn't an abuse of shared infrastructure to send multiple people emails. Facebook is just a different type of social contract. You put something out there and you know it isn't certain anyone will see it, but there is feedback "like" when they do. With emails you expected people to read them, although with some possible delay. versus Texts or IMs which usually you expect an immediate read/response.
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To retain some small semblance of our privacy
If you want privacy then don't put your information on the public web.
How would he know? (Score:3)
RMS does. (Score:2)
Actually, on 2015-03-16 he said he's been using a web browser and Tor. I don't know if the two are related and I don't know when he started using a common browser in a typical fashion.
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Re:How would he know? (Score:4, Insightful)
RTFA:
For one thing, he said, he now connects to websites from his own computer – via Tor and using a free software browser. Previously, he used a complicated workaround to more or less email webpages to himself. The announcement brought a surprised gasp and a round of applause from the 300-plus attendees./quote
It's the Stata Center at MIT... (Score:2)
Wouldn't it be nice... (Score:3, Funny)
Wouldn't it be nice if there were some way of linking us to additional information on the topic so that we could see his quotes in context? A shame that these things don't exist. They'd be hyper neat.
no TFS at all, eh? (Score:2)
this is basically incitement to flamewar :)
Facebook == evil? (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFS: According to RMS, Facebook is a "monstrous surveillance engine,"
Frankly, I think he's being excessively kind on Facebook there and that's the last thing I would have expected from him!
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Stallman already has a web page to warn users to avoid Facebook [stallman.org]. It's not that the issue needs no more thought, it's that he didn't choose to spend more time discussing it. Like everything in life, it's a balancing act to direct your limited time according the space provided.
RTFA? (Score:2)
Has RTFA become so absent that we just don't bother with TFA anymore?
Stata Center (Score:1)
Not Scala Center
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He he. I wondered if MIT had done a deal with Martin Odersky's Typesafe or partnered with EPFL.
Scala as a teaching language in the USA?
He's right, thank god for EU and Canada rights (Score:1)
In the end, the fact that citizens of the EU and of Canada reside in the US and, under the separate US/Canada and US/EU Data Treaties can not have their privacy rights stolen without specific item by item agreement (not Click To Accept), will be what saves the US Internet from itself.
Slashdot Evolution (Score:1)
I've always thought we should just dismiss the pedantry of linking to the article as it's never read anyway.
Finally some libre hardware recognition (Score:4, Insightful)
Good to see that RMS is now backing libre hardware, I remember the last time Slashdot interviewed him he seemed completely unaware of it and thought that he was being asked about drivers.
The data logger in my sports car is libre hardware & software B-)
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A number of us brought that up in the questions session when he spoke at the University of Illinois back on March 16th. He hadn't mentioned it in his talk and didn't have much to say on it. Good that he's addressing it more now.
Look, its Stallman: (Score:2)
Unless you've been under a rock since 1983, you already know largely what position he's going to take when you go to his talk.
Complaining about it is like going out of your way to attend a Baptist Tent Meeting and then complaining that they were evangelizing.
I disagree with him on a number of areas (Surprise! Must be the first time someone has disagreed with RMS.), but he's worth listening to. Often there's a kernel of clue in what the more extreme types say.
Sometimes you gotta give it a rest. (Score:1)
Facebook and Google are far and away the best publicly available advertising tools you will find for a long time. The first place to put your business is on Facebook. And if you're selling really good shit, you cannot fail by putting all those little icons(Twitter, Linkedin, etc.) on your page. Trickle down technology, exploit it for all it's worth. Bring a friend!
RMS reminds me a lot of this guy (Score:1)
There's perfectly acceptable alternatives out there for £3.95, but he's just got to build his own for £1200. Looks like shit and works for 5 seconds, but he built it himself and that's what's important.
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you obviously didn't listen to his talk, he uses icecat with tor now.
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For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I also have no net connection much of the time.) To look at page I send mail to a daemon which runs wget and mails the page back to me. It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time.
... or this [gnu.org] rant. Since most sites no longer work without javascript, hahahaha. He's still, for all intents and purposes, stuck in the last century.
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You don't need a browser when you have emacs.
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Modpoints or I'd post in my own name ...
Highly tempted to mod you up but I am terminally unable to decide whether to mod you as "insightful" or "funny"
Definitely "Funny", since it's an AC. If it were a logged-in user, I'd use "Insightful" to contribute in some small way to their karma score.
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The Fed is not private. What private bank returns interest profits to the Treasury each year? What private bank explicitly is chartered to work in the public interest, and follow directives Congress gives it? The Fed was created to replace the private central banks ("clearninghouses") that had been evolved to expand the money supply in panics. The private sector realized that it was not good to have an individual such as J. P. Morgan as the lender of last resort, because as a private, profit-motivated indiv
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From an interview on July 2005 about the housing bubble:
INTERVIEWER: Tell me, what is the worst-case scenario? Sir, we have so many economists coming on our air and saying, "Oh, this is a bubble, and it's going to burst, and this is going to be a real issue for the economy." Some say it could even cause a recession at some point. What is the worst-case scenario, if in fact we were to see prices come down substantially across the country?
BERNANKE: Wel
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s/on/in
Re:End the Fed! (Score:4, Interesting)
What non-governmental institution turns over its profits to the US Treasury? What non-governmental institution has to have its head approved by Congress? What non-governmental institution has its charter written by Congress?
The Fed should learn to keep interest rates low. If you look at a graph of interest rates [stlouisfed.org], you'll see that interest rate hikes preceded 8 of the last 9 recessions. Only four out of 12 rate hikes didn't cause recessions.
Why should the Fed raise interest rates now? It just raises costs to borrowers and increases bank profits. Interest rate hikes caused the housing crisis in 2007, because the ARMs adjusted to the increased prime rates instigated by the Fed.
Why is there this mass hysteria that rates have to increase, when clearly rate increases precipitated the most recent crash?
"The Federal Reserve also ignored Bagehot's recommendation of what to do during a bank run: make money readily available but on good collateral at dear prices. Instead, the Federal Reserve paid good money for garbage from the banks."
I would argue that the collateral is good. It was market groupthink that resulted in the crash, gossip in chatrooms hysterically screaming that every mortgage was in default. In fact the vast majority of mortgages didn't default. A few did, which was expected, but irrational paranoiac fear took over, as the market loves to let it.
Bagehot was too conservative with his "at a high rate of interest" dictum. Also, the Fed should bail out individuals, not banks. Even Kenneth Rogoff agrees [harvard.edu]:
It is up to us to change the political possibilities by educating ourselves and voting in representatives that will tell the Fed to help individuals instead of corporations.
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Interest rates are about managing inflation/deflation and about creating a stimulus tool during difficult economic times. Think of the interest rates as a piggy bank - right now, our piggy bank is empty because we burned all our 'savings' in attempting to spur the economy after the most recent crash. If we hit another recession while this piggy bank is empty, we will lack a tool that helps ease the recession cliff significantly. As far as recessions go, this is the most important tool - if the economy ch
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The Fed should learn to keep interest rates low. If you look at a graph of interest rates [stlouisfed.org], you'll see that interest rate hikes preceded 8 of the last 9 recessions. Only four out of 12 rate hikes didn't cause recessions.
That's the worst attempt to interpret data I've seen all month. Nice try bro.
Re:And body odor (Score:4, Informative)
He has a problem with personal hygiene.
If this was intended to make RMS look bad, it has backfired. It just makes his detractors look like a bunch of schoolyard children who can't come up with a real criticism, but decided they just don't like the guy so he must be bad.
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Here is a link, for those who haven't watched it: https://youtu.be/I25UeVXrEHQ [youtu.be]
A few problems with that (Score:3, Insightful)
1) He's not made a religion out of it, you've decided that it is easier to "explain away" as a religion and therefore decided it is.
2) You can't build anything. You needed the freedom to use the tools how you wished to use them to create your edifice. If your hammer had an EULA that said you couldn't share the house you built with it and if you left or moved house, then you had to destroy the house or be jailed and/or fined, then you would know how much you need to have the freedom of hammer manufacturers c
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2) You can't build anything. You needed the freedom to use the tools how you wished to use them to create your edifice. If your hammer had an EULA that said you couldn't share the house you built with it and if you left or moved house, then you had to destroy the house or be jailed and/or fined, then you would know how much you need to have the freedom of hammer manufacturers curtailed.
Nonsense. If all the hammer manufacturers used such a license, then out of nowhere a new company would open, sell hammers with the current standard license (which is you do with it what you want) at a good profit, and take over the whole market within five seconds.
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I don't view Stallman as having a "communistic" mind-set at all. I view him as having a post-scarcity mind-set. In terms of the modern Information Age and its ability to make virtually infinite perfect copies of bits at nearly zero cost, he is correct. That you and others who share your viewpoint would read his works and falsely liken it to a doctrine arising in the mid-1800s (i.e. Marxism/Communism) simply tells me that the man is ahead of his time.
The point about a hammer stands, because much software
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You're not only missing the point, you're also falling for the line that companies like facebook want you to fall for. There's no way to say this nicely and you'll probably hate me and disagree with me, but I have to tell you anyway.
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There are much worse religions than that.
I wish most religions placed half that much value on justifying their doctrines.
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... and never use software I don't like! My opinions are objective truths of the universe and can never be wrong.
Perhaps this is a generational difference. In school, I was taught not to write "I think this is so" or "I believe this is true" in anything even slightly resembling formal composition. I was taught that, perhaps barring a rigorous scientific publication, anytime you read any written work of any sort in which the author takes a position, what you are reading is exactly that: one person's position. It should be understood as something like an opinion, something that may change at a later date, something