

Richard Stallman Explains His Position on Google [video] - dredmorbius
http://techrights.org/2014/02/10/stallman-on-google/

======
camillomiller
This website is the epithome of what's wrong with the free software movement.
I'm reading it from my devilishly closed iPad and I can't watch the video
because it's in a format incompatible with the devices many people use to surf
the internet everyday.

To hear what Stallman has to say, I should switch to a PC, which would
probably have a closed system installed on it anyway.

Given that I gain access to the content I'd be still baffled by a website that
looks like it's got some CSS issues, unless it was designed in 1993.

All of that considering that I know who Stallman is, what's Going on with the
website, why I can't play the video and what's exactly a .ogg video file.

In other words, these guys are still pushing hard to spin themselves into
oblivion and irrelevance. That is really sad.

~~~
zebra
In fact you are giving argument in favor for the free software.

~~~
camillomiller
Well, no? They're shutting themselves in in their Ivory tower. If you're
already a free software enthusiast, than maybe you can hear what THE MASTER
has to say. Otherwise, well, be fine with your life of consumerism and
oppression that we won't contribute to overcome because our self-entitlement
and shut-in attitude.

~~~
BESebastian
Going on the defensive and posting snarky replies purely because your device
of choice opted not to support the format - despite being free to do so - is
neither big, nor clever. The person you're replying to is completely correct,
you make a great case as to why free and open software is a good thing,
because your ability to experience this content is hindered by a walled garden
of an OS.

~~~
camillomiller
Unfortunately I made a mistake. I shouldn't have mentioned the iPad. It
weakens the central point - I.e. The fact that many free software advocates
are themselves the feeders of their marginality

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gst
While I agree with him on some points most of his arguments are just absurd.
Javascript is now a bad thing too, because websites don't license it under the
GPL? I wonder what his opinion on Postscript is, given it's a turing complete
language. Am I only allowed to read Postscript documents if they are licensed
under the GPL?

~~~
dredmorbius
It's not JS but _the Javascript applications_ (which are almost always non-
free) that he objects to.

Particularly where websites disable functionality _unless_ you're accessing
them with JS enabled.

As an example of the latter, I was setting up some custom search engines for
Chrome (you can enter the search URL of any site and replace the keyword with
"%s"), which is handy for quickly dialing in on content on a specific site,
etc.

And I've got a large (1000+ articles) Readability list. Which I would like to
be able to at least run title searches on (that's all that Readability
supports). The problem: Readability's search access _is implemented fully in
Javascript_. I _can 't_ search by URL, which means rather than search from the
address bar (as I can for many sites) I've got to navigate to my reading list
(oh, they set up the landing page so you hit a "recommended reading list"
first, so now it's _two_ steps to get to where I want to be), _then_ run your
search.

It's a small bit of friction, but it's an annoyance, and gratuitous. And if
the site _wasn 't_ relying on JS, my ability to interact _with content I 've
curated myself_ would be much greater (search from commandline tools, etc.).

------
just_observing
2 minutes on one very very small aspect of Google? That hardly warrants this
title.

~~~
dredmorbius
The title was the one on the post itself, HN rules.

And there were two aspects covered.

