We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

submitted by Mnemonic from linuxjournal.com

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[–]Mnemonic[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The need for security and paranoia (as if you could forget) was in fact brought up by you, when you argued that RMS and his 4 freedoms aren't the only reason to use FOSS. You argued that intelligence agencies use FOSS too!

Exactly, though I don't see how using a modified Ubuntu nor Wireshark helps with privacy nor paranoia. This remark of me was to show that FOSS doesn't suck, not that it's protecting your privacy (Wireshark is used to sniff stuff out), again something you made up.

Here you went from taking an argument which was meant to be a counter to 'it sucks' and turn it into some fantastical thing that I have said FOSS is great for privacy. You could have asked instead of making stuff up about what I meant. But it's common knowledge I presumed you knew. Like I keep asking what FOSS is in your eyes, I presumed you knew and had some criticism, then in my eyes turned out you were bumped about Gimp, Libre Office and Signal.

you're literally citing RMS' 4 freedoms as the only justification for FOSS for the masses

? No I just pointed out what FOSS is at it's core (you, again, make up it's somehow 'my only justification'):

  1. Freedom to run the program as you wish.

  2. Freedom to study the source code of the program and then change it so the program does what you wish.

  3. Freedom to help your neighbour. That’s the freedom to redistribute the exact copies of the software when you wish.

  4. Freedom to contribute to your community. That’s the freedom to distribute copies or modified versions when you wish.

You see how it says 'freedom to'. You don't have to, but you can. Like painting your house, you don't have to, but it's nice to know when you want it to do, you can call a local painter to sort it out. But I guess RMS got you triggered somehow, I appreciate you not bringing up the toe jam though.

right back to the point where I started about why FOSS doesn't appeal to most users.

And I ask now, again, why is that the part that doesn't make it appealing for the public? and with 'the part' I mean FOSS. Like we both agree, normal users don't give/know a damn: Why would something being FOSS be bad in their eyes. You gave 3 examples of a GUI that 'sucked' (and went on to say everything FOSS sucks and it's developers, which I'm countering and then my arguments become oil somehow in your eyes). The label FOSS or even the truth of something being FOSS is not something people turn away from it. (because they don't even know)

that means the programmer didn't do the job properly.

They never do their work properly, I don't assume and I hope you don't think that non-FOSS means 'they did their jobs before shipping it out for cash'. But to be more specific because it's hard to grasp: I buy something and I can't do with it what I want, that's not freedom. It's not about that people 'should' tweak it, but it's optional. Like the Brave Browser, he didn't like Firefox, so he made his own with the things he liked from Firefox. Is this too hard to grasp? Is this the thing we are hung up on?

Instead of having to write and understand and repair and maintain his own program, he wants the exact opposite, which is to let the developer do it for him so he can just use a pretty-looking program to write letters or watch porn. That's it.

You mean like, installing firefox for example? Or installing a web server? setting up LaTeX for university reports? Or any other FOSS application? That's it.

because even if they could hire a programmer they wouldn't want to proofread their work to make sure the programmer didn't put in something awful.

I really don't see how this is FOSS exclusive; at least in FOSS you might have the luck some nerd catches the awful thing instead of letting it slide because the company wants it in and else the programmer gets fired/sued for leaking details about a very vulnerable opening.

playing with definitions, dragging in unrelated software

Sure, me... I still don't believe you know what FOSS means outside your bad experiences with those 3 applications and RMS memes.

(defining web servers as consumer products? Seriously?)

How are they not? You don't have a person website? Portfolio (wanted among artists)? Family history site? That's cool, but if your definition of the web is: corporations only... well LOL how did you get here? (because well FOSS developers suck and all, your words, ehm, why you use saidit? saidit's only proprietary code is Cassandra, something to keep it all in RAM IIRC) Or am I now twisting your words? (How does it feel?)

and now, contradicting and denying your own statements. I'm just not getting any signs of thought from your replies at all.

Could you point them out? Because I only spotted you misinterpreting my words on purpose (because I don't think you're a fool).

[–]worm 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I've always loved it when people take specific quotes and respond to them individually without responding to the passage as a whole. I think it frees them from the responsibility of understanding the thesis before them, and consequently from producing a counterthesis of their own.

In my opinion, singling these replies out is a surefire way to identify someone who's arguing in bad faith, having given up any hope of understanding the arguments they oppose and hoping only to "win" on some obscure internet forum that nobody else will ever read in order to satisfy their egos.

The fundamental point which I made again and again is that most users don't want Stallman's four freedoms. You could put all four freedoms before them and they wouldn't care. You could take them away and they still wouldn't care. If they're using free software, it's just because it happens to be free while possessing some characteristic they like; not because it is free software in and of itself. The exceptions to this rule are the exceptionally paranoid, government agencies or those who insist on getting a Librebooted laptop and reading through every single line of code they run, and the Stallman worshippers who refuse to use proprietary software on moral grounds. Sure, maybe it'd be possible to create free software that people like to use. But the moment something better comes along? Even if it's proprietary, people will move on to that without fail, because they don't give a shit about the 4 freedoms, because in an ideal world they'd never exercise those freedoms anyway.

The argument I'm making is really just that simple. You can bring up as many ancillary points you'd like about free software being terrible, or servers being defined as consumer goods, or trusting in FOSS vs trusting in scale, or so on - but none of these ancillary points address the central issue, which is the simple fact that most people don't care about Stallman's 4 freedoms either way, and that it is rational for them to not care. The average user is not any better off in Stallman's dreamworld than they are in the present world; in either case, their reluctance to read source code for themselves would mean that they are reliant on developer honesty, and frankly, if I had to choose between trusting Google and trusting you to make sure that my software hasn't got any weird shit in it, it wouldn't be irrational at all to prefer to trust Google.

As a final ancillary point - just because I cannot help myself sometimes - the definition of a web server as being consumer software is clearly wrong in every sense of the word. A personal website, or a portfolio for that matter, are goods produced to satisfy other consumers. In other words, the man who creates his personal website, or the artist who creates a porfolio website, is hiring a web server in order to produce a consumer good for others. The consumers who visit that ultimate product don't give a shit whether it's running Microsoft or Google or Apache technology, and I'd challenge you to find any average Joe who boycotts websites on the ground that they're on non-free web servers. For all I know, Stallman might actually do that - somehow I don't think that's too out of character - but good luck convincing the average Joe to discriminate on the basis of web servers.