

RMS on evil developers, spying social networks, the legitimacy of Anonymous - Tsiolkovsky
http://rt.com/news/richard-stallman-free-software-875/

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tux1968
RMS is likely to be judged very kindly by future historians for fighting the
good fight. But let's hope that it's not because his worst fears have come to
fruition.

~~~
neilk
Oh yeah, he's one of those guys that nobody wants to talk to when he's alive
and in everyone's face, but will be widely praised after he's safely dead.

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shocks
I agree with a lot of RMS' views, but I would be very interested to know what
he thinks about computer games (PC, and consoles). Can anyone shed any light
on this?

The way I see it, games are much like an interactive film. It's an experience
someone has personally created for us. It's more of an art than a computer
program. I'm aware of open source games, but I wonder how an open source model
would affect a game like Battlefield 3? Cheating would surely be rampant. I
certainly do not expect Terabytes of data when I watch a film so I can make
the changes I want, nor do I expect sheet music when I buy an album. Games are
as much of an art as music & films.

What about consoles? They are viciously protected from custom modifications. I
don't agree with this, I believe it's our hardware and we should be allowed to
do as we wish (hey Microsoft, blowing fuses in my NVRAM without telling me is
really not cool).

~~~
jerrya
Similarly are distributed computing projects like SETI at Home which (last I
knew) were explicitly NOT open sourced because allowing others to see the code
would explicitly undermine their trust in the computations done remotely.

I haven't seen RMS address that either; I think his views would be
interesting.

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dchest
Can't such software be reverse engineered?

Also, the home page for BOINC (<http://boinc.berkeley.edu/>) says it's open
source.

~~~
jerrya
It's been sometime since I looked at it, but you can see
<http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=7531773> that as of 2003, it was
closed source

 _The FAQ states they decided to make the code proprietary "for security
reasons and for science reasons as well"._

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plg
I think it's great that RMS still generates debate. These are issues that we
should always be thinking about and debating. What a wonderful legacy.

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flatline
I really respect many of Stallman's views but I still have trouble reconciling
GPL'd software and sustainable commercial innovation. Doesn't the GPL level
the playing field to such an extent that the competition can undercut your
business model with trivial ease? I would hate to put a bunch of work into
something that I planned on making money from only to have perfect copycats
overnight. Selling support only scales well for some software.

~~~
rdouble
His views on free software come from a very different idealized reality than
what actually exists. From the GNU Manifesto:

 _In the long run, making programs free is a step toward the postscarcity
world, where nobody will have to work very hard just to make a living. People
will be free to devote themselves to activities that are fun, such as
programming, after spending the necessary ten hours a week on required tasks
such as legislation, family counseling, robot repair and asteroid prospecting.
There will be no need to be able to make a living from programming._

~~~
maigret
Which has some truth in it. Our world is already struggling to keep people
employed despite continuous productivity gains. As developers, we know the
next 20 years will probably be low risk for us, but many professions are
endangered. Who will be a truck or taxi driver when the Google car will work
fine? Who will need secretaries when Siri will be evolved? New technologies
are just not creating that much jobs.

Note that I am not disagreeing with you, I just suppose that RMS may not be
completely wrong.

~~~
jerrya
1995, Jeremy Rifkin talked about the End of Work, saying we should plan for
how to structure society as it was coming. He was ignored, and now we seem to
be living the results of not planning for it.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Work>

 _The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the
Post-Market Era is a non-fiction book by American economist Jeremy Rifkin,
published in 1995 by Putnam Publishing Group.[1]

In 1995, Rifkin contended that worldwide unemployment would increase as
information technology eliminates tens of millions of jobs in the
manufacturing, agricultural and service sectors. He traced the devastating
impact of automation on blue-collar, retail and wholesale employees. While a
small elite of corporate managers and knowledge workers reap the benefits of
the high-tech world economy, the American middle class continues to shrink and
the workplace becomes ever more stressful.

As the market economy and public sector decline, Rifkin predicted the growth
of a third sector—voluntary and community-based service organizations—that
will create new jobs with government support to rebuild decaying neighborhoods
and provide social services. To finance this enterprise, he advocated scaling
down the military budget, enacting a value added tax on nonessential goods and
services and redirecting federal and state funds to provide a "social wage" in
lieu of welfare payments to third-sector workers.[1]_

~~~
pmr_
It's shocking that only a minority of people in technology know about post-
scarcity concepts. Un-employing others is our main goal and when we cannot
sustain an income from supporting an application, technology has done exactly
that to us. Support has either been crowd-sourced or enough able people are
able to add enhancements themselves. We should be the ones that are most aware
of these consequences and simply move on to new technologies and projects
instead of artificially limiting our products.

~~~
drivingmenuts
It's not the technology workers that are getting hurt the worst by this
change, though. It's all the other people in businesses affected by and
attached to the tech industry, who don't have the flexibility to pivot quickly
or at all.

Moving on to new technologies just puts more people out of work with nothing
to replace their old jobs.

Additionally, technology is neutral regarding human nature. As we grow older,
we are less comfortable with shifting around and there are attachments that
make it more difficult.

Sure, it's great to be rootless and fancy-free when you're in your 20s, but
when you hit 40 or 50, you have to start thinking about how it's all going to
end.

~~~
pmr_
So should we just stop developing technology because all those jobs have to be
preserved? You seem to take jobs as something that is inherent to the
existence of the individual. The book recommended by the parent (and some
others) question that position and explore alternatives and the transition
from a society rooted in that belief and one that doesn't require the
existence of jobs.

Technology is not about putting a few people out of "work", but about freeing
people from it altogether.

~~~
tree_of_item
Jobs are something inherent to the existence of individuals until we somehow
trick the political class in to implementing basic income, which is absolutely
not happening any time soon. All this talk of "post-scarcity" tomorrow ignores
the fact that no jobs causes a lot problems for people today.

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rbanffy
It's really ludicrous we all know the business model of record labels and
movie studios, of selling the right to use and possess something that costs
nothing to duplicate, is dead while we are still delusional about our ability
to sell software licenses...

~~~
paulhauggis
"costs nothing to duplicate"

I have a challenge for you. Make the last Metallica album in your home without
making copy. How long do you think it will take you? How about Photoshop?

If you find it's difficult, it's because the original is what costs money, not
the duplicate.

I also find it interesting that you can't see the value in bits that "cost
nothing to copy".

Yet, with currency, it's just ink and paper (physically worth considerably
less) that represents much more in value. I'm not sure why this concept is so
difficult to grasp when we've already been using it for many years before
digital content.

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steve-howard
I was particularly shocked by the following:

"The Anonymous protests for the most part work by having a lot of people send
a lot of commands to a website, that it can’t handle so many requests. This is
equivalent of a crowd of people going to the door of a building and having a
protest on the street. It’s basically legitimate. And when people object to
this, let’s look at who they are and what they do. Usually they are people who
are doing much worse things"

So he's saying that DDoS attacks are legitimate, and anyone who doesn't think
they are is up to no good?

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IvarTJ
If I understand, he is first of all referring to DDoS attacks where many
people voluntarily traffic a server with common computer setups, not when a
small number of people pull off major attacks using extra resources such as
unwilling puppets.

~~~
steve-howard
It's still an intentional denial of service.

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spodek
From the article: "Stallman is the man behind the concept that every computer
program must be free for users to study and modify as they want."

Does he suggest software _must_ be free?

We know he doesn't say the must be free in cost. Does he say they need to be
free as in speech? I've never heard him say that. I don't think of him as
telling others what they _must_ do.

I feel like a lot of the polarization around what he says comes from
misunderstanding. This feels like one of them.

~~~
topbanana
Yes. Can't wait to see AirTrafficControl-buntu.

~~~
spindritf
Free air traffic control software doesn't really sound absurd. Software
doesn't give one air traffic control centre any advantage over another. That's
not how they compete if they compete at all, so they may as well give it away.

~~~
jiggy2011
Yes, it's not like ATC are suddenly going to start installing every random
nightly release on their production systems.

I would imagine they would stay safely (maybe even years) behind the cutting
edge. But common availability of the source code would make it easier to share
information that may be able to speed up acceptance testing or flag up issues.

You could argue it's actually _more_ dangerous for an airport to rely on
software that is opaque, for all they know there is some edge condition in
there by accident (or on purpose) that could cause mayhem.

I am going to assume however that ATC software source code is rigoursly
audited by a trusted partner of the airports using it.

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jerrya
_With software patterns the US has become a dangerous place for software
development, including innovative software development_

That's close to how I feel about patterns as well.

~~~
bitwize
Yeah, that Gang of Four, man. Almost as bad as the original Gang of Four.

~~~
stock_toaster
Four horsemen of the scrumpocolypse?

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dimitar
I think its unfortunate that RMS speaks at RT - a channel that broadcasts
Russian government propaganda and weird conspiracy theories.

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pnathan
He's in Russia this month, as I recall the FSF newsletter's information.

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dimitar
And what? He couldn't find any credible media to speak to?

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omouse
Credible like who? FOX? CNN? Al-jazeera?

