What is Lains opinions on Richard Stallman?

>A friend once asked me to watch a video with her that she was going to display on her computer using Netflix. I declined, saying that Netflix was such a threat to freedom that I could not treat it as anything but an enemy. I did not want to watch anything through Netflix or Spotify even on someone else's computer. -https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html I personally like his ethics behind free software. In the sense that the freedom to manipulate and distribute software freely with the code being visible so you know what you're actualling installing onto your system. I do think in terms of a privacy stand point his views are interesting in the sense of he claims to never use the internet if he can without accessing tor and he his big on not using propriety software that are basically used to spy on you. Although I can't get behind not using a smartphone or not being able to use any single phone at all that's just not something that I can achieve in my position. His interviews are funny to watch I've seen one where he basically snaps back at someone because the way they're wording their question

I fear for what kind of "leadership" the free software movement is going to have when he passes. It seems like it might require a bit of the autism spectrum to produce someone as principled about free software as Stallman.

I can't get behind such stances either. I understand wanting free software to be the default, but he opposes it as if their existence or consumption actively harms people. There are so many other things to take stands against that are more important than free software; his level of antagonism just makes him look ridiculous. Finding a compromise and luring people into the free movement is much more effective than writing away others entirely.

>>90266 Name one time compromising with the enemy lead to victory for the communism movement

He founded the free software movement over dealing with a software locked printer. 40 years later, the most popular 3D printers are open source, but we still don't have anything for ink on paper. Isn't that funny? These days, software is everywhere: Phones, cars, cameras. You can't go anywhere or do anything without touching it, so if we want to be free, it also needs to be. Anything else leads to a future where technology becomes a tool to control us instead of improving our lives, although it feels like we're already most of the way there. Stallman is absolutely right in his beliefs, and GPL copyleft is the biggest differentiator between BSD and Linux kernel development, but he failed to make those beliefs a reality. He fumbled the GNU/Linux situation, effectively took the FSF out of the discussion, and as a result there's no real counterweight to corporate interests in kernel development anymore. Outside the kernel, more and more parts are swapped with MIT licensed replacements under the guise of a Rust rewrite. Once everything outside the kernel is MIT, why not replace Linux with BSD? Then they can continue development on a proprietary fork, and rake in the big bucks. Seems to be the plan for Ubuntu and Fedora, at least, because it's working for Apple just fine. BSDards are the useful idiots of the software world. Outside the desktop and servers, things are even worse. Too often, the only way to avoid proprietary software with all the pain it enables is to avoid software as a whole, but can you avoid using a banking app dependent on some Apple/Google "trusted platform" surveillance system? If you can, please do. Can you avoid driving to work using a car that won't let you disable telemetry? If you can, please do. Can you avoid being scanned by a Flock camera? I can't.

>>90271 >le free code is communism There is nothing making free software akin to communism. Its closest relative is the right to repair. If you buy a car, you should have the ability to fix, modify, or otherwise recreate it. That is the only argument made by free software advocates.

>BSDards are the useful idiots of the software world. Obligatory https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/intel/

I like him. If he wasn't around GNU would probably have never existed, along with linux. For all his flaws things would be soooo mich worse without him. As for his hardline stance, he makes it clear on his site that he doesn't expect everyone to follow his lead and acknowledges that gently encouraging people to use free software is more effective than any other method.

>>90266 >as if their existence or consumption actively harms people It does. You don't need to look further than the terms of service and the privacy policy you have to agree to use any commercial device, be it a game console, a smartphone, a car (lol), a computer, a fridge (wtf?) and so on. Look a bit further and you will see the attention-maximing algorithmic niggerhell most people live in on social media. These companies with their mystery black-box algorithms actively harm the mental aptitude of everyone, especially children. Our lives, our politics and our employment prospects are shaped by a handful of corporations that are literally above the law. You have to decouple financial interests from the software if you want to ever protect your freedom. Enshittification happens so frequently that I don't even feel that I need to present any evidence here, it is common knowledge. Kick out the advertisers, the dataminers, subscription based services, proprietary programs that never get fixed until there is a competitor with teeth, and most problems we have with computers will disappear overnight.

>>90278 > worker owns his own means of production (vim) [x] > no private property [x] > no commodification [x] what am i missing? You said "buy" but we're talking about "free software". So what are you "buying"?

>>90283 I can't tell if you are a troll or not. Are you really equating vim to a worker owning the means of production? Would you say a blacksmith "owns the means of production" because he uses tools he made himself, and is therefore a communist? Free doesn't mean you stop owning it. You can make a FOSS product and only give the source code to those who pay your license. You are buying a license for the software. Have you never read anything explaining what "free" means? It is in the meaning of "freedom", not given at no cost. You'll often see websites use "libre" instead of free to avoid this confusion.

>>90284 >You can make a FOSS product and only give the source code to those who pay your license. You cannot restrict customers from sharing this code with others, which the internet has made doing trivial. >>90282 >You have to decouple financial interests from the software if you want to ever protect your freedom. Utility software should be differentiated from entertainment/artistic software.

>>90285 >You cannot restrict customers from sharing this code with others, which the internet has made doing trivial. Nobody claimed the opposite. What is your point? >>90282 What I meant in my comment is that the level of pettiness is really high for the level of harm. Compare how people still buy avocados despite the cartel profiting from them and murdering poor farmers in Mexico. Or how Nestle hoards public resources like rivers and has products that rely on slave labor. These are publicly known issues and nobody really cares to stop consuming. Stallman taking such a strong stand against something that is relatively a nothing-burger is what makes him look ridiculous. I respect his stance, but with so many more important things, it seems silly to expend such energy on something so small. But then again, he is the leader of the FOSS movement. He didn't end up there by having half-measures.

Stallman is the most real dude in the game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6c7GtVtiGc

>>90287 >nobody really cares I care enough to be conscious about my own spending habits. There is obviously also a vegan movement whether you agree with their ethics or not. People do care but they are ridiculed for having empathy, guess by who. It's a matter of principle. You can't change the world but you can change yourself. If you can also inspire others to change themselves, all the better. It's much better than just giving up and becoming a part of the problem.

>>90287 >What is your point? "You're allowed to sell the source code" is not a counter point to "you can't effectively profit from FOSS software and therefore don't own it in any meaningful sense, which is akin to communism".

>>90290 Having the ability to profit effectively from something, and the ownership of it are not correlated . An artist can post their drawings online and anyone can go along and take their product. They can draw over it, recolor it, modify it, or remake it entirely all without the artist making any money. Yet, the artist still has ownership of it. Would you call that communism? I don't think you would, unless you don't know what communism is.

>>90291 Anyone can pirate Windows too. There's a difference between people being capable of violating your exclusive distribution rights, and forfeiting that right all together. Hurdles to that right being violated, like paywalls, DRM and DMCA take downs, do actually make that difference result in tangible profit. That's why artists bother with Fantia and the like. Nobody actually exercises their right to sell FOSS source code, because that's pointless and retarded, they just ask for donations.

the truth about Stallman, and even if nothing else.... the world needs people like him even if you think he's a crackpot....like imagine a tech world without people like Richard Stallman... there would be wayyyy less innovation and the corporations and entities he decries are already running rampant and enlarging themselves way beyond they ever should have, probably even way beyond their own reach or grasp i know he's a Jew, but guys like this literally founded the United States... not trolling, he might as well be one of the guys who signed off on the constitution

>>90271 Stallman or Open Source is not the same thing as Communism....i'm almost certain there are plenty of instances where the Communists had to compromise somewhere on something...many in the West in WW2 would have gladly and easily invaded the USSR had they antagonized the West into doing so at the time i may be mistaken, but did not in our life-time the CCP compromise on capitalism? and now people speak about how great they are that they appear to be more successful at capitalism than the capitalists... they certainly had to compromise with their own people during the cultural revolution Marx had to compromise with all his buddies when he was couchsurfing in London writing his books

i mostly have used Ubuntu but recently had to ditch Ubuntu for Linux Mint when i saw how proprietary Ubuntu was getting >>90282 lol

For those suggesting that stallman is promoting some sort of communism in this thread. First off understand what communism is. In simple terms we're removing private businesses and giving it up to be all state run. I've seen a interview with stallman (Pretty Funny actually) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkkDvKGcNSo Go to 24 Minutes In that video roughly. He's not against capitalism but I believe he wants to promote a healthy form of it instead of businesses sucking the life of the consumers. This isn't communism, free software is not communism thinking it is is so half brained

>>90284 I sound like a troll because your understanding of what words like communism mean is based on a wrong understanding instead of on reading Engels. Since you have a backwards understanding of communism, nothing I say will make sense to you if you don't read essays like Socialism Utopian and Scientific and Critique of the Gotha Programme. Regarding vim and blacksmithing tools, it doesn't matter if the blacksmith "made his own tools" regarding whether the worker (blacksmith or programmer) "owns his means of production". If someone else made the tools, but the worker owns the tools, he owns his means of production whether or not he is also the blacksmith who made the tools. In the case of vim, it's a tool of many programmers, who therefore own their own means of production, meaning they can use it in their work without paying rent, with no restrictions, to write code, even if they didn't write vim themselves. Engels points out that originally medieval craftsmen owned (and often made) their own tools. But to compete against modern industry they had to go work in a factory with other people's machine tools. Just like today many have to go work for Microsoft and use Visual Studio. The objective of socialism is to reestablish the ownership relationship of the medieval craftsman and his tools, but in a modern mass-manufacturing context. In the case of vim, which has a "GPL-compatible" license the license is the legal construct that ensures the programmer can own his own tools. It's called "socialism" because it raises ownership of the means of production beyond petty craftsman status, and beyond private corporate ownership, to the level of society as a whole. The point is to evolve forward, instead of backward to petty-craftsman economy, by "socializing" the means of production on the basis of mass manufacturing (in the case of vim this means unrestricted binary distribution). >You can make a FOSS product and only give the source code to those who pay your license The point of the GPL is it legally severs the ability of the capitalist to appropriate the work product of someone else and sell it as his own exclusive property. The fundamental basis of capitalism is that the person owning and selling products is NOT the person who made the product. This is called commodity production by wage labor on the basis of private ownership of the means of production. In the case of your job at Microsoft, that means you can't sell or give away the code you wrote for Satya Nadella, because it belongs to the Microsoft Corporation and not the programmers who wrote it.

>>90298 >In simple terms we're >we're So you're a self-identified communist. Why should anyone concern themselves with your semantic fixations? The effect is what matters, not the intent. >>90304 >The point of the GPL is it legally severs the ability of the capitalist to appropriate the work product of someone else and sell it as his own exclusive property. The fundamental basis of capitalism... The effect. So it is communistic. And do you have no problem when there's a company comprised of 1 singular person who sells proprietary software?

>>90304 >The fundamental basis of capitalism is that the person owning and selling products is NOT the person who made the product. No, it's that the person owning the machines used to make the product isn't necessarily the one that operates it. With how many commies shout this everywhere, I'd assume people here would know such a basic fact.

>>90305 >why should anyone concern themselves with your semantic fixations? >>90306 >it's not that the person owning/selling products doesn't make them, it's that the person owning the machinery that makes the products (and the produce thereof) doesn't make -- uh I mean operate the machinery that makes -- the product pick a lane, capitards.

>>90304 You are really overthinking this. Communism isn't even in the same category as products. It is an ECONOMICAL system, not a random license policy someone makes for their software. >>90305 > The effect is what matters, not the intent. You can make a consequentialist argument, but it makes you fall into some pits. People who pirate movies are essentially sharing the product of corporations, and individuals, at no cost with no compensation for the copyright holder. Gratis for all, the effect is that the owner doesn't "own" their product in practice, right? So that makes is communist as well? Movie piracy is there for communist, unless the intent of the laws and the intent of the copyright holder matter

>>90308 This is my fault for using the C word on an anglosphere website. My real point is that compromise with enemies of freedom is very nearly always a bad move. Never surrender!! >luring people into the free movement more like luring freedom into slavery

>>90308 >So that makes is communist as well? Yes, it does. Torrents are very communist. Not all communism is bad though. A little bit of communism is okay.

>>90311 Activities such as the ones you describe are still not the same as a literary political ideology. They are just activities, actions done by people.

>>90308 >So that makes is communist as well? These actions are not communist, they are just actions for a purpose. In order to define these actions as Communism you would have to do something like saying, "I am partaking in these actions in the name of Communism!" If lainons are smooth-brained enough to not be ideologically neutral in an assessment of actions, and computer scientists and this sort of thing, you are screwing yourself around by fighting the ideological war in your mind, and projecting it onto other lainons. Or you are acting in bad faith like trying to dictate ideology to the world, and since when should that be anyone's job? There are more productive things you can be doing with yourself, like judging actions and people and events for what they are and not through the lens of political ideology. >>90311 Torrenting is an action, not a political ideology. Free software is intended to preserve the technology and the novel inventions and innovation and the authenticity thereof, and not allow it to be perverted into a weaponized control grid as it is today. It was invented for a purpose, but since we did not preserve the freedoms like these guys warned us about, now it is nothing more than a talking, thinking interactive gulag and instead of productivity and innovation you have wanton control, megalomania, highly annoying profit-seeking, illusions, perversions like attempts to alter peoples' behavior and all the weird freakshow soykaf we see on the internet today. Remember, once upon a time, before our time, the internet and technology were introduced into the classrooms of children and children were taught of it in a very positive way because of how novel it was and that it had such potential for good. This is why folks like Richard Stallman do what they do. You think they are still doing that with the internet in the classrooms of children, today? I doubt it because it would be harming the children because just as these guys foretold, it turned into a system of abuse rather than a way to channel creativity and innovation.

> communism this > capitalism that What are you guys talking about? It's simple: 1. If you buy something, you own it. 2. You realistically need to own property which uses software to function in society. Therefore: 3. You have the right to know exactly what the software running on your property does. 4. You have the right to remove and replace the software running on your property. 5. You have the right to function in society using only software which respects your rights. Copyleft is just a practical consequence of 5. Without that, the options which respect your rights are obsolesced by proprietary software built over it. Code acquired through copyleft let Linux become an useable alternative to Windows on servers and even desktops these days. Without copyleft, by industry standards, the BSDs' feature set isn't much less barebones than it was 20 years ago. They respect user rights in what they do, but they can't do nearly enough, not to gain notable market share on servers, nor to serve as a free desktop alternative to Apple's Darwin using them as a foundation. The BSD codebase is so small and useless that a business has no choice but to make their derivatives proprietary to recoup the costs of making them work. As Linux gets more code it becomes more attractive for a business to use that codebase in return for the small copyleft contributions (if any) needed to fit its usecase. GhostBSD doesn't count, because it depends on copylefted code for MATE and everything, although it's nice to play around with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpZ5STahhPE Check this out lainons, these documentaries about the internet and computers from the 1980's are super enlightening, desu. Look at the world that Stallman and these guys lived in and just how serious people actually took this stuff back then. Abuses of power were a big deal, and then somehow as it all got going all that concern and awareness was forgotten. This documentary here below from 1981 is absolutely amazing, it predicts the whole dilemma we are in today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoQkyyh3ZvM >misuse and abuse of data technology "Adequate safe-guards must always stand watch so that man remains the master and never becomes the victim of the computer."

What I dislike most about the communism argument is that its a direct attempt at poisoning the well. Whether FOSS has traits to any economic system is irrelevant to the discussion. I've seen people argue for the opposite, that it is hyper-capitalist because the market decides which software is good enough to be maintained and shared. It's all nonsense noise that doesn't get at the core of the issue; freedom to do what you want with the tool you bought. Ideally, it should have never left this plane. But people can't help but think in soykafbrained political terms that don't matter to the discussion.

>>90339 This is the best way of looking at things and I completely agree with this.

>>90339 Just because you don't want it to matter doesn't mean it isn't genuinely relevant. This is a very anti-intellectual attitude to have and I hope you don't approach other subjects with the same kind of forced compartmentalization.

>>90347 Good things can exist that are capitalistic in nature, as well as communist in nature. Just above, people were arguing that piracy/torrenting are akin to communism. Yet, it is liked by a lot of people and few ever argue against it. Modern tech companies are the result of capitalism but the public agrees that they are anti-consumer and hurt the rights of citizens. So we know that practices and ethics resembling economic systems has no weight on whether they are good or bad. Now I ask you, why should anyone care that FOSS resembles or doesn't resemble hyper-capitalism or communism? How does its relation to such ideas affect whether it is an ethical system that should be adopted or suppressed?

>>90350 Other posters in this thread have already given you reasons to care. Your problem is that you're so insecure in your own political beliefs that you want to plug your fingers in your ears and pretend that software occupies some kind of special, mutually exclusive realm detached from the rest of political economy. People sometimes refer to this attitude as radical centrism--love of the status quo in times of crisis--but it's ultimately a kind of nihilism. I remember a similar discussion here last year, about how the United States was directly undermining the international reputation and stability of the GPL by coercing free software projects to exclude developers from nationalities it didn't approve of, and that thread was killed for equally nihilistic reasons.

>>90352 Pointing at the other random comments on this thread is not answering my question. You are even engaging in personal attacks rather than giving me an argument. If you are not willing discuss this, then I suggest you return to the clover imageboard. Such comments are appreciated more over there

>>90350 >How does its relation to such ideas affect whether it is an ethical system that should be adopted or suppressed? Because, obviously, if my team does it it is good, and if the other team does it it is bad. It is very important that my team can take credit for a good thing!

i know the meme is that stallman as this ideologically rigid autist but to be honest, if i wrote a significant part of GNU, only to see it discreetly and illegally used to surveil and abuse users, rob people of their life savings and regularly extract as much labor as possible from devs to be paid as little a possible i would probably not want to touch a significant amount of proprietary software too. it is also completely understandable that he would create a new software license for it and start a foundation dedicated to protecting the rights of users and programmers around the world, and the proprietary software industry has nevertheless been trying to be as abusive as possible. you have to understand this is something he dedicated his life to, and that for the past 50 years people who kill people have been trying to undermine his life's work, blacken his name, and do basically every evil thing you can think of over it. the man is probably traumatized, not wanting to use netflix after everything he's no doubt been through is a sensible reaction and it would leave a bad taste in my mouth too.

He seemingly does make some strange misunderstanding of what is even realistic. For example open source websites arent a thing. You dont compile the websites you visit, you have no way of knowing what is actually in their code any more than any binary file, so you are just going by their word they used the source code they present. Likewise if you make a digital financial transaction via lets say Taler for example you are just placing trust same as you would with something proprietary.

>>90339 Markets are not what mainly defines capitalism. There exists Market Socialism and Market Anarchism and there exists anti market forms of capitalism. Capitalism is about the hierarchal nature of distribution of resources as capital. When political terms are used I almost never see it used to argue for or against FOSS it is usually FOSS is used to argue for or against socialism of some kind or to try to get people to understand socialism is about social exchange by using an every day example people will understand from experience.

>>90355 >give me an argument I don't need to. For the moment I am simply enjoying the enlightening exchanges between others that's been going on in this thread. Whereas you're just being a little baby trying to get people to just shut up and stop talking about things that trigger your cognitive dissonance. That's what I don't like. >go back to X It's always incredibly ironic to read posters like this hostile to open intellectual exchanges act like they have any sort of high ground to stand on. Don't pretend for a second that you're above the hugboxes constructed by unprincipled jannies on legacy forums like 4chan, that's that same soykaf you're calling for when you try to discourage discussion.

I once asked Stallman if he thought the Enclosure movement at the end of the Middle Ages, where fences were constructed around common pastoral land as it was forcefully privatized into the hands of a minority, is actually not unlike the concept of intellectual property: constructing imaginary fences in all of our minds and saying that only certain people are entitled to use them. The parallels are striking: whereas property enclosure set the stage for the development of capitalism by throwing the peasantry off the common land and into the cities where they could perform wage labor, intellectual property allows industrial capitalists to cope with declining profits on real, physical goods or services by transforming themselves into a rentier class that simply makes money off of extracting rent from people through an asserted claim on ideas. Stallman's response was frustrating: he spent his time quibbling over terminology and ultimately evaded the question. I think Stallman himself wants to sit on the fence on the question of economic systems because he's afraid of alienating other people in the free software movement. That's understandable and I respect that. However, there are limitations to avoiding questions of political economy. Avoidance can leave you blindsided by something unexpected and render you unable to respond to a crisis. I see something unfortunately similar emerging in the FSF recently on the question of the United States government itself sabotaging the GPL that makes me very fearful about the future of free software once Stallman is gone.

i have been absent from this conversation for a spell (i am a normal person commoner) >>90339 If it resonates with any political ideology, that is probably going to be a particular form of Libertarianism. Maybe it flirts with Anarchism a little bit, albeit a centralized form of Anarchy. I do not really understand Anarchy but I should. Am I imagining things, or is it so that whoever is likening Linux to Communism gaslighting this whole thread? Possible troll? >>90352 that is a rather horrible and malicious trend taking place among our establishment right now. it may be a legit attempt at Fascism, that's sorts what it feels like. although they have much support in the us from certain demographics that used to be libertarian The US has changed drastically in the last 30 years or so. It is more crowded, racial demographics have shifted. There's a nation-wide housing crisis. Widespread indoctrination from multiple camps. Things are getting more expensive. The establishment is aggressively trying to double-down. There is expanded consciousness about social issues and a general increase in intelligence. White Anglo Saxon Protestants and other whiteys like myself are more and moreso becoming minority. Capitalism in failing. Technology and the Internet have radically transformed culture. There is definitely some soykafe going down with the US right now. >>90358 i am curious to hear more about this. are not all websites laid upon the foundation of agreed universal protocols though? >>90362 Very telling and well articulated. Am I mistaken to think that Capitalism was invented in Britain and and Holland while they were trying for the life of them to subjugate many other nations besides themselves? Am I mistaken to think that it was not invented without the approval of royals and aristocrats, who at the time were very much so invested in control and staying in power and lording themselves against the common British, French or Dutch person?

>>90363 >although they have much support in the us from certain demographics that used to be libertarian sorry i should correct myself here. they have some support from the U.S. population, for example young people who used to be libertarian.....also and especially people of a more simple-minded persuasion who have passions but are not necessarily politically astute......there has been a lot of conservative and republican indoctrination since the internet came around...there has also been a degree of leftist indoctrination since then...also of course liberal indoctrination through the woke era?.....for example the fascists might theoretically have support from places like Kansas where people are white and vested in maintaining their middle class lifestyle, and not afraid to let you know...they have diverse support, as well as the billionaires and capitalists, but I think as time goes on, the present Trump era Republican cabal will start losing support. especially from commoners and constitutionalists... i don't know the future, but i don't think the fascism is going to succeed, but they certainly pulled down the curtain when Trump was elected the second time. scary times for sure.

>>90360 If you don't have an argument that is fine. You can just say so. But if you have nothing to add to the conversation besides personal attacks, then I suggest you let adults do the talking. >>90363 I think it's just a troll as well. I've seen replies that don't have much thought put into them, like our friend above

>>90358 "Open source websites" are a thing in that JavaScript is a thing, and nowadays so is WebAssembly, and a lot of sites distribute obfuscated code that intentionally makes it difficult to understand what is going on, or even worse, intentionally prevent the user from trying to understand it with a debugger. This is code that runs on your computer and it should therefore be FOSS.

>>90366 Websites have a front end and back end. It is the backend that you will not have any chance to know what is really running as far as I am aware.

>>90264 Im not good enough at tech to actually care or discuss his views, i just try to use open source software and tools when availble for basic safety and privacy reasons

>>90264 LMAO based toe fungus eating man for sticking to his morals, that foid was not only trying to get him to compromise his values but also steal his seed and probably pass on a disease. My microbiome is absolutely buggered from having to repeatedly take antibiotics for the clap because I was too foolish and trusting in my youth. Stick to your guns, if we don't before we know it our fridges will start heating up if they detect "unhealthy" food

>>90363 >gaslighting the whole thread? I think it has less to do with intentional trolling, and more to do with how conflated the idea of "communism" is in the anglophone internet. FOSS software is certainly much more collectivist than most digital movements, so it's not surprising that people familiar with socialist and communist ideologies would see the relation. But it's really not that simple, humans just like to oversimplify complex relationships and concepts. Now just think about how the average "communist" on the anglophone internet is usually adamantly self-hating, anti-West retards who suck off any number of non-"Western" authoritarian dictatorships. No wonder a lot of people will refute any discussion of the ideology itself when one of the worst people in the room will ardently proclaim themselves to follow it. >>90264 I think the story told by >>90362 perfectly encapsulates Stallman. He's a deeply principled man, but intentionally avoidant as to the greater meaning behind his movement. He truly believes the idea of digital ownership does not extend into more general political and economic ideologies, which is of course absurd. I also just dislike how his ideology and beliefs haven't seem to meaningfully acclimated for the modern internet and computer use patterns. While the FSF's mission still holds for technical folk, sort of, it's basically entirely obsolete and useless to those who just want to "use a computer". Even if we are okay sacrificing the majority, it just works to make the entire philosophy unusable in the modern era.

>>90264 Stallman is right when it comes to tech. But I can't agree with some of his views on non-tech topics. It's absolutely true that there is no way to actually know what the computer or software is doing, if its design is not open. You can easily read about the glowing Clipper chip or obfuscated code, for instance. How can you even be sure that you have the same version of the program you are inspecting, if the source is not available and there aren't reproducible builds? (I know, that's two separate issues). What about developers introducing artificial limitations or misfeatures in their programs? You can't fix them yourself without the code! The recent problem with Botnet 10 reaching EOL proved that these limitations are introduced and that the average user can't do much about it (besides choosing a free software alternative). Also, using GPL or AGPL means that someone can't later close down the source code, and that the original developer gets the 3rd-party patches to his own programs. I think that's only fair. Of course, the author can choose different license terms, if he so wishes. Similarly, the luser can choose to install proprietary software or even malware, if he so wishes. But there should be ethical and open alternatives. In ideal world, the user should always have the option to choose to run 100% free software on open hardware. I read a blog post about laws of sane personal computing that summarized a lot of my own thoughts: >loper-os.org/?p=284

>>91263 >>90264 I support Stallman's views on the age of c0ns3nt (which he purportedly recanted, but no retraction made under obvious duress from a lynch mob can be taken as legitimate). I'm currently editing a post with more details about my reasoning for this to get it past these fuarrrking gayass filters that tell me to "make a better post". I promise you it's better than any post you've ever fuarrrking made.

>>91526 cont. To elaborate, people trying to cancel Stallman over this don't actually care about having a coherent argument or worldview, they just want to police other people's bedrooms. It was never for the sake of "protecting" anyone, because it never is. It's about restricting men's options for the benefit of old women past their prime to stop men from choosing objectively better, younger options. All the rhetoric about le heckin' power imbalance and muh brain development is pseudoscientific bullshit. The elites also support this because they get off on having privileges that the commoners don't; the Epstein class are the biggest promoters of age gap hysteria. And norm0ids support it because it gives them an excuse to act like sociopathic soykafbags. This is the part where I'm supposed to ironically say "oh yeah and I guess free and open-source software is good or something". But there's another element to it which actually has a lot to do with the type of person for whom free and open-source software matters. Norms love restrictive age of c0ns3nt laws because they deny nerdy science and tech men like Stallman the opportunity to get a prime teen gf. Norms know they're worthless assholes and they could never do what a great man like Stallman does. They couldn't write a single line of code if ChatGPT didn't exist, let alone hold the entire GNU/Linux codebase in their heads like Stallman did back in the day. Normgroids could never do any sort of intellectually valuable work. They knew back in school that the nerds were going to get high-paying tech jobs and they were going to be stuck working at McDonald's, so they cling to hysterical glitterboyry as their way of feeling superior. By stopping nerds from getting teen gfs after high school, they're able to keep coping that they got laid in high school and you didn't, and they think that makes them better than incels who work as programmers at Google and engineers at NASA. Their moral worldview is poisonous to advanced civilization because it removes any incentive that the intellectually competent men needed to sustain civilization have to participate. But they cling to it because if this restriction was removed and suddenly the 30-year-old Google programmer can legally fuarrrk 15-year-old girls, any method they had to psychologically cope with their utter uselessness goes up in smoke, and so does the meal ticket for the feminist women who gave their best years to Ch4d. That's why they lie about not only the alleged morality and "science" behind the ay 0h cee (there is none), but about what the actual laws currently on the books say you can do (16 is legal without maximum age gap conditions in most states, but they pretend it's 18 everywhere). Norms are all parasitic psychopaths and their constant assholery would get them jailed or executed in an actual serious country, but America is a feminist banana republic, so they get away with it. Of course even if the laws were relaxed, Stallman as he currently is wouldn't stand a chance of getting a teen gf. But he used to be thinner and better-looking. Maybe if the laws had been done away with way back when he might have had a chance.

>>91527 I probably won't respond to any posts criticizing this to be honest. Agecvcks have proven innumerable times that they're incapable of having a discussion in good faith. They just want to engage in fake moral posturing and spew unsubstantiated feminist bullshit because they're intellectually dishonest fuarrrking niggers. But you asked for my opinion on Richard Stallman, so there it is.

Obviously an autist that should have shut the fuarrrk up instead of nitpicking the idea of "consent" in minors after his friend Marvin Minsky was named by an Epstein trafficking victim. His contribution to and advocacy for free software is invaluable.

>>91531 >biologically mandated differences between teenagers and children, objectively proving that the former and the latter are not the same, are nitpicking I guess if you're a tranny this might seem like a valid thing to say since you don't even recognize that biology exists. But please, Reddit, go ahead and tell us again how it's okay to try a 15-year-old as an adult but they're suddenly a child again if they want to have sex with an adult. fuarrrking moron.

>>91527 People are so sheltered that an eighteen year old probably has the mental maturity of a thirteen year old from a hundred years ago. School is a very traumatizing environment, it's what's responsible for this. There is an imbalance of power, but only because this person was stripped of agency and life experience until an arbitrary age. From a time when boys took their father's trade before the age of twelve, we went to an age where a twenty-something is considered a babe to the world. I'd say the change in our culture is actually a cultural response to this. It's more plausible than your theory that the jocks and cheerleaders planned to chastise the nerds during their lunch break.

the thing he did that actually mattered was writing gnu, that is to say, writing a compatible clone of the unix userland and releasing it to the public as free software. all his subsequent preaching and evangelism and attempts to make free software more free by locking it behind a restrictive copyleft license accomplished nothing. free software doesn't need litigators or ideologues, it needs programmers, people who do the tedious thankless work of reverse engineering proprietary code and writing open source software and device drivers and employing the tried-and-true tactic of adversarial interoperability to fight against big tech's dominance rather than trying to beat them in the courtroom which is a hopeless fool's errand. also he defended pedophilia and sexually harassed women and screamed at a brazilian audience for not understanding spanish and he picked scum out of his toenail and ate it. the foss world really has an ego problem and it needs to stop feeding into people's egos and get past all this "benevolent dictator" bullshit and focus on what really matters - the software. the code is what matters, not the socially-retarded malodorous weirdo who wrote it. foss has far too many steve jobs "ideas guys" and not enough steve wozniaks who want to do the actual fuarrrking work. maybe if stallman had spent more time working on his hurd kernel and less time blogging about his "childhood sweetheart" and his hatred of rap music then he wouldn't have to whine about the linux kernel overshadowing his contributions to "gnu plus linux"

>>91541 This lainon speaks the truth.

>>91533 So rape is chill? And human trafficking? fuarrrk off. He has a child's understanding of consent vs rape and he decided to share it with the world, it's not a good look for him (or you)... And if you are an adult man thinking eighteen-year-olds still aren't young enough for you that just betrays either your lack of interpersonal ability/experience or a predatory nature.

>>91531 >after No, not after. His opinion that any individual has the right to consent at the moment they have the ability to consent long predates Epstein. His quote arose after an 18 year old was put on the sex offenders register for production of child pornography after taken a nude photograph of his 17 year old girlfriend. Epstein leaks came later.

>>91566 I am not that lainon but that's not what he said and to follow it up with an insinuation that it's because he's a sex predator is just pathetic. You need to get a better argument or concede!

>>91566 >He (Stallman) has a child's understanding of consent You haven't shown that your understanding is any better than his. None of what you said was anywhere in the post you're replying to (or in Stallman's writings on the subject) except for the belief that 18 isn't young enough. >it's not a good look Unlike the post you're replying to, you didn't bother to articulate an actual argument, instead choosing to screech autistically about how anybody you don't like is a "predator". That's a much worse look.

I think RMS is a fuarrrking autist with some good and some miserable ideals. I'm a fan of GPL and I think AGPL is based. But some of his personal points are.. peculiar at best and they leave much humanity to be desired from him. You can be a fan of the whole free-as-in-freedom movement and also acknowledge that RMS is not always the person to look up to. Pretty much what >>91531 said, although the conversation derailed in a weird ass direction :D >>91533 We no longer live in the 1970's era of Skinnerian psychology where we thought that everything was defined by our experiences. Indeed, we now realize that much of what dictates who we are and what we do depends on our biological makeup, including whatever the fuarrrk is going on in developmental neurobiology and neurology in general. Do you know why someone can suffer from a late onset schizophrenia seemingly out of nowhere? Do you know why they can't be cured? Perhaps your brain structure has something to do with it as well! It's insane to me that you cry out "biology!" and yet stand behind the idea that trans identity, and the resulting gender dysphoria, is not biological even to the smallest degree. Of course, the environment _does_ play a huge role and the experiences of any one suffering person can't be reduced to biology alone -- there's more to it than a fetish. So currently, to put it nicely, you're a retard. Consider unretarding yourself by reading something more than elementary biology books.

>>91584 >We no longer live in the 1970's era of Skinnerian psychology This entire spiel is a gross mischaracterization of Skinner's theories. But even if that wasn't the case, we live in the era of the replication crisis that has shown that 2/3 of psychology research can't be replicated, so taking them as an authority on a person's development is iffy at best.

The world would've been so much different without his contributions. Most of you probably don't even realize how many times the FOSS movement has prevented us from diving head-first into a tech-corpo dystopia. I can't deny that Stallman has some outright horrible takes on some topics. He's like that one politician that was adored by masses 30 years ago, but now apparently happens to have soykaf for brains.

>>91586 >I can't deny that Stallman has some outright horrible takes on some topics. Does anybody actually have any other examples of this besides Reddit-tier seething about how a 17-year-364-day-old girl is an infant who can't make decisions?

>>90264 he has a high opinion of himself and he's sort of pretentious, a little autistic and like others have said holds some iffy opinions. I would like to say that I agree with him most of the times that I read what he said but he's somewhat of an idealist and we live in a world that will always fall short of the ideal. I appreciate the work he's done for GNU (such as GCC) and for the FOSS movement in general; being an avid supporter of FOSS myself- I also would say that even though we could do without the arrogance; the world would be a better place if there were more people like him in it. I think the people calling him a rapist are grossly misinterpreting what he said and I will say those same people are the people who keep quiet and look the other way when a real pedophile/child molester is actually staring them in the face- whatever stallman is; even if you wanna call him an apologist or an enabler- he is not a predator and is probably a decent human being, at least more than most people i'd like to point out that a lot of industries and companies would benefit from discrediting him and his ideals, so that's probably how this sort of thing gets blown out of preportion

>>91596 I'm >>91527 and I'm going to respond to this because it's not just typical r0astie rage over men choosing superior younger girls. >holds some iffy opinions The opinion that 16-year-old girls are fuarrrkable by anyone was the opinion of all of human history prior to feminism. It's incredible how brainwashed modern westoids are that they think an opinion like this is "iffy". But you still want more people like Stallman despite this, and even say he's a decent human being. My general opinion is that age of cons3nt supporters are psychopathic satanists pretending to be moral; I don't see people with your sentiments that much. I actually think it's pretty remarkable.

>>91598 I wasn't even talking about that opinion specifically- I don't think people should be crucified for having consensual sex with a 16 year old- but for example if some fuarrrking loser had sex with my 15 year old daughter and got her pregnant or gave her an STD- i'd personally shoot him in the head or throw his ass in jail to get raped. But in that case it'd be personal. If my mature 16-18 year old daughter brought an upstanding 21 year old gentleman to my house and he explained himself to me and treated my daughter right i'd probably be inclined to give him a fair shot at her- but even then that's a maybe- that's my baby girl... (on the condition he doesn't have sex in my house)

>>91600 >i'd personally shoot him in the head Or possibly get shot yourself. A lot more guys who like going younger carry guns these days because of the threat of Twitter lynch mobs. >If my mature 16-18 year old daughter brought an upstanding 21 year old gentleman to my house and he explained himself to me and treated my daughter right i'd probably be inclined to give him a fair shot at her- but even then that's a maybe- that's my baby girl... (on the condition he doesn't have sex in my house) Is this theoretical or do you actually have a daughter? I'm in my late 30s and pissed the fuarrrk off and actively rooting for the downfall of society because I should have been allowed to have this at 20-21. I would have loved to marry a teen girl and spend the rest of my life with her, but unfortunately we live in a cancerous anglo-judaic soykafhole where this is considered a heinous crime but 14-year-olds are encouraged to change their gender.

>>91601 Wanting the downfall of society because you couldn't fuarrrk a teenager is the craziest kind of victim mentality. I'm not moralfagging I'm just speaking the truth.

>>91602 >being pissed off because a core biological need isn't being met and wanting the people responsible for this to be punished is crazy Victim mentality is sometimes justified.

>>91602 Isn't that what cyberpunk is about though? Cyberpunks hate corpo society and want it to collapse. They all have different reasons for wanting this, but the underlying impulse is the same.

>>91527 >It's about restricting men's options sure, buddy >the Epstein class are the biggest promoters of age gap hysteria. sure, buddy >Norms love restrictive age of c0ns3nt laws because they deny nerdy science and tech men like Stallman the opportunity to get a prime teen g sure, buddy >They knew back in school that the nerds were going to get high-paying tech jobs and they were going to be stuck working at McDonald's sure, buddy >it removes any incentive that the intellectually competent men needed to sustain civilization have to participate. sure, buddy I don't even disagree with you about the age gap stuff, but you're a moron. You probably deserve a teenage gf, because I don't think you mentally ever left high school.

>>91601 >yeah, I'm kind of a badass, I own a gun >>91603 not in your case >>91605 wanting society to collapse because you didn't get fries with your mcsloppo meal is not cyberpunk.

>>91611 Can you maybe try to make an actual argument instead of drive-by soykafposts? This site is supposed to be better than 4chan. >>91613 >not in your case Regardless of your opinion of whether age of cons3nt laws are too strict, it's really not even debatable that victim mentality is justified for people who are part of the most hated and discriminated-against group in modern America.

>>91615 >Can you maybe try to make an actual argument instead of drive-by soykafposts? What argument do you want me to make? Your post is full of bullshit, and most of it is subjective, so it's not like there would be any value in refuting it. It would just become a battle of who can yell loudest. I can't make diamonds out of soykaf. How about we talk about the one thing you said that can actually be debated: can you name members of the Epstein class that are promoters of age gap hysteria? > it's really not even debatable that victim mentality is justified for people who are part of the most hated and discriminated-against group in modern America. I'm sure you would also agree that discrimination is also justified in some cases.

>>91616 >can you name members of the Epstein class that are promoters of age gap hysteria? Chris Hansen dated a 20-year-old when he was 50 while popping 18-year-olds for going after 15-year-olds.

>>91616 >I'm sure you would also agree that discrimination is also justified in some cases. Everybody thinks discrimination is justified when it's against somebody they don't like. How does that refute the idea that victim mentality is justified for people who are overwhelmingly hated in their society, for whatever reason (or lack of a reason)? If you're posting on this board you probably have something that makes you feel like a victim, as many imageboard users do, even if it's just corpos suppressing free and open-source software.

>>91618 >How does that refute the idea that victim mentality is justified for people who are overwhelmingly hated in their society, for whatever reason So if I can show you evidence that, for instance, a trans teenager is overwhelmingly hated in their local society, then you would agree that their victim mentality is justified? >If you're posting on this board you probably have something that makes you feel like a victim Not really. You bring up libre software but I don't feel victimized for using it. The corpos are my enemy, but that doesn't make me their victim.

>>91617 She was 30. I think you misread a headline that said "20 years his junior". People don't usually care much about age gaps for older couples. People also usually use "Epstein Class" to refer to billionaires and their sycophants, and I don't think Chris Hansen qualifies.

>>91619 >So if I can show you evidence that, for instance, a trans teenager is overwhelmingly hated in their local society, then you would agree that their victim mentality is justified? Yes, of course. I think the idea of gender dysphoria is overblown by doctors so they can sell hormone replacement therapy, but if they're in a situation where everyone around them hates them and abuses them and actively wants them to die, they're inarguably a victim. >>91620 Wasn't that a separate relationship? Pretty sure she was an actual 20-year-old. >People also usually use "Epstein Class" to refer to billionaires and their sycophants, and I don't think Chris Hansen qualifies. His bosses at NBC do.

>>91621 >they're inarguably a victim. Whether or not a person is a victim isn't the same as having "victim mentality". Example, the trans kid that whines online about how the cishets are all evil and everyone who misgendered them is first up against the wall when the revolution comes is engaging in victim mentality. The trans kid that defends themselves when threatened and maybe gets involved in local politics, but otherwise just lives their life, is not. >Wasn't that a separate relationship? Pretty sure she was an actual 20-year-old. I don't know, I heard of Chris Hansen for the first time when I read that post and all the articles I can find about him in an affair say she was 30. >His bosses at NBC do. So?

>>91622 >Example, the trans kid that whines online about how the cishets are all evil and everyone who misgendered them is first up against the wall when the revolution comes is engaging in victim mentality. The trans kid that defends themselves when threatened and maybe gets involved in local politics, but otherwise just lives their life, is not. Thing is, if everybody in a society constantly threatens you and spews slander and hate speech about you, it becomes very difficult to distinguish between defending yourself when attacked and advocating for the downfall of society because all of society is threatening you.

>>91625 well, when it comes down to it, I think you're a whiny moron and you're not cool for wanting society to fall because you can't fuarrrk a teenager.

>>91626 When it comes down to it, I don't value your opinion because you clearly lack the theory of mind to be able to put yourself in somebody else's shoes. I don't care if retarded glitterboys think I'm cool or not.

I have another question that's at least as important as your opinion of Stallman: How come nobody else like him has shown up yet? He's getting old and has no real successor.

You can fuarrrk a teenager if you have enough money, or are charismatic enough and put yourself in the right position to. For instance, a sports coach or teacher or some bs like that. You'll be reprimanded by society if you're caught, but it is possible.

>>91648 This is what the idpollocks want to do. That's why they scream so much about it.

>>90264 just an autistic jewish atheist. but by the grace of God he seems to have had a positive impact on this world anyway.