Programs were way simpler, and shipping the source code in paper was the de facto way of distribution.
It's not like he was a wacko around his peers. He just created what seemed a logical step from that.
I'm just sad that there's no young people to pass the torch for when the time comes and the founding fathers are no more.
I wish I can be one of those young people who can be a worthy successor to Richard Stallman. I already am to a great extent, preferring FLOSS whenever possible (with an unfortunate exemption for video games, especially many PC and all console games).
My primary issue is now trying to find like people who are also into FLOSS as much as I am, and they're not as common as tech illiterate people are. Maybe someone can advise me on how I can get started (online or local around the Houston, TX area).
An important thing RMS did was producing good software along with his advocacy. For example, even though it's inferior to vim (joking), it was and is a killer app. What RMS didn't write himself, he helped to drive and organize, and ended up as a force behind some of the most important tools we still use today, like gcc.
For RMS it was pretty obvious where the needs were. Today it's much less so, but if you want to make a big difference and start a name for yourself, I would probably look for areas where there aren't great FLOSS options and try to take on one of those. It will be challenging no doubt.
My best advice (take with a grain of salt as I'm not the next RMS which is where you want to be), keep preaching the gospel of FLOSS! Help people find and use software (and hardware) that respects their freedom! Pay attention to users that you teach, and identify usability issues that hurt adoption and work to fix them. Be "that guy" that people call when they have a problem and need a solution.
I feel like this is a bit of a misperception. Does this historically happen?
It’s not too late by any means, but it’s looking very bleak for Free software with most kids’ computing being smartphones and cloud services via chromebooks.
I think that's why we don't see many new people flocking to FSF projects.
Perhaps FSF has solved all the problems the community at large deems as worth solving.
It makes me wonder if a new org isn't what we need. I love the FSF and feel they did a tremendous service to the world, but the religious extremism limits their appeal only to true die-hard believers.
I definitely agree that the general trend towards less advanced technology will harm that though (some 18yo's don't even know how files work because they just use Mac's Finder), but some cohort of the generation will _always_ be interested in digging deeper.
It perhaps doesn't help that the general attitude of someone in FOSS/tech in general could be perceived by the average person as elitist or exclusionary - I try my hardest to challenge these notions.
(Let's see if one of the other founding members of the new club will read this comment)
Huh? Finder is the macos equivalent of explorer.exe and it's the GUI for the file system. I assume you're taking about Spotlight which searches the entire file system and the internet much like the Windows start menu.
Anyway people have been making claims like this for as long as computers have been around. Smart people use Spotlight and the start menu because it requires fewer keystrokes than typing full paths or clicking 10 times to navigate a directory tree with Finder. It would be stupid to avoid using the fastest tools available
Ultimately, some people are just not interested in technology or using it efficiently.
https://www.ibisworld.com/us/bed/percentage-of-households-wi...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/748551/worldwide-househo...
It's just like if you tell someone a joke. You can still claim credit for coming up with it, but not to stop its propagation.
In particular, you can still make money as a developer by asking for it upfront, whether from an employer, or patrons, or early access, or whatever model. Similar to how Netflix might pay someone upfront to develop a stand-up comedy special
That said, I basically never seen anyone charge for a distribution. I figured that people think there's no point, so they just don't.
Now, charging for development? That absolutely happens.
I charge for development of (F)OSS. It's my salary. My employer likewise charges the patrons/funding agencies. But we get paid once for the effort, like any usual labor contract. We don't try to get paid again when our past work products are copied.
In the old days, paying a distribution cost was more common for free software, when it actually took effort such as writing and shipping media. This handled the case where someone asked for a distribution, so that sharing did not become a financial burden. It's a mostly obsolete concept now with pervasive internet and many low cost or free hosting options to put content out there at essentially zero marginal cost to deliver copies.
yes there are; but also not really.
due to my age cohort I'm see my self as this "next generation" software scientist/engineer who is aware and believes in FOSS and "liberty minded software";
I suppose most of use are millennials but the whole generation-label stuff is not accurate so maybe in the USA this next gen of people are a bit older but in other poorer countries they're younger???
in any case I think a lot of younger engineers got swayed away from the FSF/GNU ideological stuff by means of 'being pragmatic' which is just a consequence of when the open source movement distinguished itself as different from the free software.
I think the impact of this may have something to do with leidenfrost's appraisal that there's no next-gen to pass the torch to.
it seems like us millennials do not rally, we don't come together into any kind of social movement or dunno.
TBH I would put Drew DeVault in this category.
> Fuck Richard Stallman and his enablers, his supporters, and the Free Software Foundation’s leadership as a whole. Shame on you. Shame on you.
(He uses the word fuck in that post five times.)
Drew has done some great work in OSS but he has a history of going after people he doesn't like in a very vicious way. You can't really behave like this and be a leader. A leader needs to unite not divide. For all the criticisms leveled against Stallman he saved most of his vitriol for the enemies of OSS. If everything he wrote had been as personal and expletive-laden as what Drew writes the FSF would not have gotten very far.
I feel like back in the day there would have been so many easy wins for modifications. Like how people used to root Android to add screenshot capability.
These days modern software is so extremely sophisticated and refined that I can’t think of anything I could improve for say iOS.
Still love foss, but the idea of “it’s open source, you can improve it yourself any time” has worn off for me.
Apple is ultimately going to work in their own best interest. Their particular brand aligns that with the consumer fairly well, but there will be disconnects.
Yes, it would be very hard. But today it is impossible, so very hard is hardly a complaint you can make in comparison.
Did my other two examples seem more reasonable?
The caveat is that sometimes an initiative can be funded by charity or bounty to keep interest, but relying on generosity for 99.99% of projects is a fool's errand.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt
via
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/201cthe-printer-story201...
> Still love foss, but the idea of “it’s open source, you can improve it yourself any time” has worn off for me.
If you look at major MacOS or iOS releases, you will often see new features being advertised that were copied from FOSS systems that experimented with them and proved them out often many years beforehand.
That is to say: iOS might have the edge on QA, but if you want to have impact and shape the future of how people use computers, contributing in the community is still a good way to do this. And in fact, commercial development tends to rely on this talent pool for survival, as companies do a comparatively poor job in educating new talent. It's where you get people with "job experience" in doing certain things.
When picking a phone I like to see if it's on the LineageOS devices page (you bring up a good point that different variations of the same model aren't equal, definitely watch out for that), as that means both that the bootloader is unlockable and that someone else is already maintaining a ROM for it, and hopefully will for years to come. If I just go after the shiny new hardware, chances are the bootloader is locked and it will never be unlocked, generating e-waste.
That makes it rather easier...
It is a bit like a Linux distro running Steam. Yeah, there are proprietary bits, but the FOSS part naturally happens on the FOSS parts.
All I'm saying is that there's a big difference in jailbreaking an OS when most of the source code of that OS is publicly available for study and experiment. Surely that is not a controversial statement?
The internet makes it really easy to purity test a community into an echo chamber. Many people willingly subject themselves to these purity tests to fit in and be part of the community, which is also why we see negative communities tending toward a downward spiral (like any of the 4chan communities) as people walk step by step to more extremism in their views.
What can we expect when most of the internet is paid for by abusing people's vices. The "whales" of the mobile gaming industry exist in other industries too. The majority of alcohol is purchased by a relatively small percentage of consumers - meaning the alcohol industry's main source of income is people so addicted they drink as much as they can, regardless of consequences.
When your money is made because people can't help themselves, that's blood money. It's not surprising that a society which tolerates (and encourages!) companies to pursue blood money would likewise have other moral failings, including a tendency to separate into tribes and attack different tribes.
Check out doomworld some time to see what’s been going on. Unbelievably good level design and mods all over the place, custom source ports everywhere, thousands of maps, etc
Time and time again showed me why free and open source software is important, but they keep lagging behind their competitors in term of funding.
I wouldn't be able to use Word attachments (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html)
I wouldn't be able to use Windows (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/upgrade-windows.html)
I wouldn't be able to package useful non-free software for my Linux distro (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/compromise.html)
I would have to call the Linux distro a "GNU/Linux distro" (https://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html)
I would have to ideally stop, but at least reduce, my usage of WhatsApp, Facebook, Slack, etc. (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/saying-no-even-once.html)
These are just all-in-all minor examples I could find in a couple of minutes on gnu.org. I remember reading much more radical takes by Stallman and his companions, but would have to spend more time searching for them.
During the civil rights movement black people were encouraged to not use the buses while segregation was in place. You'd be the guy complaining about how difficult it would be to get around without the bus.
Sometimes the way forward involves going back to fix the wrongs of the past. People like Stallman see the world from a higher dimension. He isn't living on flatland like you and me. There is no world where proprietary software and computing freedom can coexist. If there was you can bet Stallman would be advocating the shortest path to such a world.