As far as I can tell, the L in "FLOSS" is typically "libre," not "Liberal." I feel like the author is vastly and misleadingly inflating his relevance in this post.

Indeed. And the article is playing dirty politics, imho. The L in "FLOSS" means Libre to me too. The only way I have ever seen it used. Redefining its common meaning is disingenious. Call the alternative FLIBERO or something.. free, liberal, open. And build your story around that. If people like it, it may gain traction. And otherwise.. too bad. But don't hijack existing acronyms like this.

(OT: Hijacking terminology happens more often by big tech. The other day I came upon a great example, but forgot. But terms like "serverless" are example, meaning 'servers abstracted away by The Cloud')

So in floss, that would be free free open source software.

Which doesn't seem right? Unless there is another meaning to libre I'm missing?

Interesting!

It is in opposition to "restricted" software where you are restricted in all of those. (Copyleft software restrict others from adding more restrictions, which is defensible but some BSD proponents disagree)

Libre is, as many have said, just the Latin word for Free. You'd still have to explain what it means in this context.

"Open Source" has similar problems: many think that it's enough for source code to be available for inspection for software to be called "Open Source", but it is just a another attempt to market a philosophy under a particular name.

These constructs are created to have a special meaning to promote an ideology, and are thus usually capitalized in English. This is nothing uncommon, and attempting to use these—now accepted—phrases to mean something else is bound to cause confusion. So, just like you learn what a "programming language" or "HyperText Transport Protocol" is (yes, one transfers a lot more than just "HyperText" over it), if you are in IT, one should learn what "Free Software" and "Open Source" mean.

I do like the idea of distinction between GLOSS and PLOSS, but we've got enough acronym soup at this point that I'd say just stick with FLOSS.

Also, many people who only speak English don't know the word Libre.

Because then people would think they are losing something by using it? /s

But if you paid for it, they ain't allowed to, of course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software

Update: The distinction is important. It also entails that people should be able to earn a living by providing FLOSS software. Many people that don't know much about FLOSS think of it as the "Free beer" variant (something promoted by much of big tech, which is seemingly free). There can be good business models attached to FLOSS (though devs have a very hard time to monetize in practice).

I heartily applaud anyone trying to monetize FLOSS based on decent principles and values, rather than just bottom-line, willingly taking the hard road of founding a bootstrapped, sustainable business.

This is also what the phrase "free as in speech, not as in beer" attempts to disambiguate.

http://freebeer.org/blog/recipe

(Notably Microsoft had the gals to do it in its English PR and translate all over the world, including literal translations to Latin languages where both words are completely different.)

> Caring about who gets the credit more than successfully creating change is not a good look.

So yeah, the author is disingenuous at best.

Another point where they pretend not to see the benefits: Free Software and specifically copyleft has succeeded in getting so many manufacturers to publish their kernel source code, opening the door for bringing more freedom to a bunch of people using their technological devices today (eg. all the ROMs for phones and IoT devices).

And the attempt to highlight the "metonymy" (you know they are bullshitting as soon as they start using terms unfamiliar to the masses) in "free press" but argue against "free software" standing for "software that can be freely used" is very hypocritical too. Righto, who is this "the speech" in "free speech" (alluding to their use of "the software" group).

I've given up reading at that point because it's a post by someone bitter focusing on an unproven premise (how a political ideology has failed if there is no change in leadership for more than 10 years — maybe it's because centralised leadership is not necessary to achieve it ;-)).

Anyway, language is free for people to adapt to their needs, and no amount of elitist grammatical nitpicking will ever change that.

I don't understand. What definition of "liberal" has a meaning in education?

> As far as I can tell, the L in "FLOSS" is typically "libre," not "Liberal." I feel like the author is vastly and misleadingly inflating his relevance in this post.

I can find no evidence of this term being used anywhere outside of this piece; FLOSS is consistently expanded by people discussing the term as “Free/Libre and Open Source", where “Libre” disambiguates the sense of “free”.

The author may have coined a term that happens to spelled identically to a popular term, but the clear insinuation that the popular term refers to the authors hobby horse is grossly misleading and obviously deliberately so.

> A researcher studying practices and methods used by developers in the free software community decided that these questions were independent of the developers' political views, so he used the term “FLOSS,”

Unfortunately he doesn't name that researcher, whom he is attributing FLOSS to. Anyone knows?

According to Stallmann "FLOSS" is the most inclusive term including open source with a non-free license though:

> Thus, if you want to be neutral between free software and open source, and clear about them, the way to achieve that is to say “FLOSS,” not “FOSS.”

So and I'm suprised by that, while L stands for libre according to Stallman, the acronym FLOSS is a actually a more liberal term because it is neutral to whether the software in question free or only open source.

[0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.en.html

The opensource definition [0] and free software definition [1] are similar enough in outcome (if not intent) that such a thing is basically impossible.

Last time I looked the only difference between the OSI's and FSF's lists of acceptable licenses was the OpenWatcom license, which requires you to release the source even when you just deploy it privately. This was a mistake on part of the OSI and should not have been accepted. At least Debian, Fedora and the FSF consider it to be unacceptable.

[0] https://opensource.org/osd [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

The open source page also says “ The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.” which would seem to disqualify the GPL.

No. The FSF considers the MIT license to be a Free software license compatible with the GPL. [1]

> The open source page also says “ The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.” which would seem to disqualify the GPL.

Section 5 of GPLv3 ("Conveying Modified Source Versions.") contains the following text:

'A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an “aggregate” if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit. Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate.'

IANAL, but to me, that means the license doesn't insist on all other software on the same medium being licensed under the GPL.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#X11License

No, the FSF specifically IDENTIFIES MIT as meeting the Free Software Definition, which does not require any such requirement.

Now, Stallman and the FSF have identified reasons that they prefer copyleft licenses like the (A)GPL for many uses, but that isn't the same as considering them the only Free licenses.

> The open source page also says “ The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.” which would seem to disqualify the GPL.

The GPL explicitly does not put any restrictions on other software merely because if is distributed along with the licensed software.

I really think copyleft being free is a stretch people make because of what an uphill battle free software has. I mean peep the name 'copyleft'

I understand the argument that FLOSS (Libre) was always a movement that was not just about software, but just because it is not only about software does not imply that shoving any random ideology into it (as the author is doing) is welcome.

I reiterate: if credit doesn't matter to the author, why is he trying to steal credit for FLOSS?

Hypocritical, intellectually dishonest, and borderline fraudulent to make the claims he is making.

It's not a brand new construction (the link has the author of the piece using the term several years ago). I think you are right about the L though.

This is a terrible document that is riddled with so many inaccuracies that it doesn't convince anyone other than the uninformed. If anything, the last few years have highlighted the need for Free Software and proved many of the alarmist warnings of advocates were prescient actually and not so alarmist.

And please don't give me "that was on consumer models only". I really couldn't care less. A company pulling off such dirty shit winds up on my eternal shitlist. No matter how great their "professional" products are.

I'm sure there are countless other examples.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish

Interesting that the founders of Superfish are both Israeli, I wonder if they both served with the Unit 8200 that was posted on here recently?

Even if Superfish was GPL licensed, the issue would've persisted. As article mentions even laptops coming with Linux pre-installed hardly come with the Kernel and userspace tools source code and you need to download them separately. Should Lenovo have preloaded Superfish as Linux kernel module and shipped it to its consumer laptops, United States Department of Homeland Security would have still advised removing it.

>In both cases higher authorities hired by people to protect them, protected them. Not FSF,

The FSF did a better job of protecting them with their unwavering stance. Neither would ever have caused an issue if you followed their advice to never use non-free software.

Pretty much the only things on my phone that aren't adware or spyware are free software apps.

Still, I think it used to be much worse or at least more obvious in the early 2000s. At that time Shareware was still a thing and it was normal for installers to add completely unrelated 3rdparty software. Probably that's also half the explanation why Windows used to be so unreliable, half of the ecosystem around was just random stuff.

JFC. I'm sorry, but this "article" can be dismissed on that alone. Software vendors already are inserting spyware into their "wares." Did the author do any research?

> The Free Software coterie is fond of insisting that words mean what they say they mean, and that is a profound misunderstanding of the nature of language. Such linguistic naïveté is not an asset in pursuing political goals.

Uh, take your snooty diaeresis and shove it where l'accent aigu don't shine?

Defining terms is par for the course in the general intellectual sphere. Academic papers, data sheets for microchips and ISO standards for programming languages all define terms and insist on using them in the defined way.

If that's not enough, there is outright misinformed claptrap:

> With all that said, the intent of the adherents to the term Free Software is to seek to promote certain freedoms for the users of software, by depriving the creators of software (at least in the United States) of the rights afforded them by Congress under Article I, Section VIII, Clause VIII.

What? Creators of software are deprived of freedoms by the Free Software Foundation? Not simply encouraged to copyleft their software, while retaining all rights to license it in other ways at the same time?

Crazy.

More abhorrent than that is the position that free software should be done in such a way that nobody claims credit, justified by a glib quote from Harry Truman. Harry Truman was a politician and, for a time, president of the United States. Presidents rely on other people to execute plans, and implicitly get credit for everything good that happens during their reign anyway, as well as blame for the bad. So it's easy to make seemingly magnanimous statements of that sort. I would rather say that the absence of a blame environment is more conductive to getting things done, rather than the absence of credit.

Software is a creative work made by specific authors, who undeniably deserve credit. Credit transcends even copyright. To falsely claim authorship of a work in the public domain isn't a copyright violation, yet it is plagiarism. It will forever be plagiarism, even when the work is millennia old. Falsely claiming to have produced a cave painting that is 30,000 years old is plagiarism. Some unknown prehistoric person is credited with that.

The western intellectual tradition is heavily steeped in credit. Theories, equations, industrial processes, objects and phenomena in nature, and other entities connected to ideas and discovery, are often named after individuals. Maxwell's equations, Einstein's relativity, Rayleigh scattering, Bell's palsy, Fermat's Last Theorem, Pascal's Triangle, Haber-Bosch process for ammonia production, Early effect in transistors ... credit, credit everywhere in STEM, philosophy, the humanities.

I find it obnoxiously odious for someone to dare suggest that free software developers should disrobe themselves of claims to credit. In free software, credit is your only reward, more often than not.

Look at the giant tantrum basically every software vendor is throwing over the quite reasonable restrictions that the EU placed on spyware. I have to tell users about the spyware I'm inflicting on them and ask for consent first? End of the world.

But hey, if this guy's really a software architect then he might've cured my Impostor Syndrome, so I guess he has my thanks.

I can't argue with the specific usecase presented in that GitHub issue, I'm going to keep telemetry enabled. But if you argue that vendors "usually won't be inserting spyware", in the face of evidence like free software products seeing value in phoning home with telemetry data, I think I have the moral right to reject your argument in full.

https://github.com/sumneko/lua-language-server/issues/462

I can't think of anyone I know who has a car that needs to phone home. But that's a very limited sample size, so you know. Also, I'm most likely in a different market to you, we've never had anything like OnStar make inroads here into domestic vehicles - some commercial operators are using telemetry on their trucks etc.

But rest assured, if all our cars were phoning home, I'd be making a massive fuss.

For example, an insurance company in my country has recently launched an app that will "measure" your driving and offer lower premiums if your driving is "safe" according to their algorithms. It's obviously opt-in, but at some point, the difference between a discount for opting in, and a penalty for opting out, becomes hard to differentiate.

You don't have any rights to review their algorithms if you feel that they got it wrong, it's a combination of Hail Corporate and Hail AI, and context is lost because it's impossible to capture that. E.g., does heavy braking indicate you were driving poorly, or did you encounter a situation where heavy braking was necessary, such as the damn cat down the road that thinks it's invincible deciding to make a sprint for it in front of you? Is acceleration in excess of their defined limit unsafe? Or were you accelerating more than you normally would, because someone gave you space to turn into the road and you didn't want to needlessly hold them up, given their courtesy?

And given what I've seen of the FAANG algorithms, I don't want algorithms from companies nowhere near FAANG level making decisions about me. A personal favourite of mine was FB removing a comment of mine, because my sister said she'd totally marry my wife, on account of how, well, pretty damn awesome my wife is, and I'd replied "Haha, I'll fight you" - and FB had flagged that as "hate speech/incitement to violence".

Anyway, thank you for coming to my TED rant.

You don’t know anyone with a Tesla? https://www.tesla.com/support/connectivity

Or a Honda? https://hondalink.honda.com/#/

Or a Bmw? https://connecteddrive.bmwusa.com/app/index.html#/portal

Or a Toyota? https://www.supraconnect.com/app/index.html#/portal

You don’t know anyone with a Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep or Ram brand vehicle? https://www.driveuconnect.com/

You didn’t hear about the remote control vulnerability 6 years ago? Chrysler recalled their entire fleet to fix it. https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-hig...

Definitely no Chryslers, Dodges, Fiats, or Rams. They are very limited in market reach indeed in NZ, unless we're talking vintage cars, then there's a few more.

I also had the, ahem, "privilege" of owning a GM built "Toyota" previously[1]. It was... shall we say, a cacophony of interesting and bemusing engineering choices - the boot/trunk lid was incredibly heavy, yet the latch mechanism was made entirely of plastic, and to turn on the interior lights, you had to turn the dashboard brightness dial all the way up, and then a bit more, and then the interior lights would turn on. Only took me 3 months to figure that out. Admittedly, was handy for turning on the interior lights without looking away while driving, but was not at all intuitive.

Oh, I do know someone with a couple of Jeeps though, the poor bastards.

I guess you could rephrase my statement as "I don't know anyone with a car built after 2016", although as far as I can tell in NZ, Toyotas, at least, ship with telematics as an option for fleet management, rather than a default.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Cavalier#Toyota_Cava...

A lot of consumers (I would guess most) prefer to have default-on connectivity to provide services like theft protection, automatic emergency support in case of accidents, and up-to-date navigation maps, among many other modern conveniences.

As others point out, it's almost impossible to get a new car these days that isn't connected. Anything in the last five years in particular. It's pretty disgusting and one of the reasons I'm in no hurry to own anything new. I have a '97, '02 and '10 and they all work quite well for me and I intend to run them into the ground. And if I'm diligent they should last me until I am no longer fit to drive.

In NZ we tend to buy used Japanese imports because they're so damn cheap (IIRC, Japan has very strict rules about the age of a car for pollution control purposes, so they get shipped off to Australia and us after hitting that age limit, and we don't charge tariffs, unlike the Aussies), most people here would be lucky to buy a new car once or twice in their life.

Unless you go the usual route and start a building company, tick up a new Ford Ranger on the company's credit, transfer ownership to your spouse/partner, and then go into liquidation leaving behind devastated people who were trying to build their first home - and subcontractors who really need the $12k you owe them.

Cars Have Your Location. This Spy Firm Wants to Sell It to the U.S. Military:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26492322

One company wants to sell the feds location data from every car on Earth:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26511649

Military Unit Conducting Drone Strikes Bought Location Data from Ordinary Apps:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26367747

Nissans do, my Leaf does. They connect to a mobile network or WiFi and upload data.

https://www.nissan.co.uk/ownership/nissan-infotainment-syste...

I've been driving EVs for the past 10 years (LEAF -> Model X -> I-PACE) during which time I haven't used a gas pump. After reading your comment I had to go searching for this thing about ads playing while you're filling up. I found this Reddit post about being forced to watch ads before being allowed to even start the pump!

https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/819tcf/forci...

Oh. My. God. I'm disappointed. Not surprised. But disappointed.

> playing inside of the car

Yeah, that's definitely going at the top of my list of car "misfeatures" that would make me run screaming to another brand.

Goddamn, I don't want this post to be a screenshot for someone to point out that we can see the future.

It's definitely the way the industry wants to go - I mean, free data, why not? Bit like the FAANGs, dress up the data collection with some features people want.

Might just be a case that no-one I know owns a late model car :D We're big on older Japanese imports in NZ, god bless our lack of tariffs. Although RIP our local car manufacturing industry, god bless neoliberalism.

That is very much not true, on both counts.

There is a lot of nuance in this area.

Monitoring how well your own systems are working and how they're being used is one thing. It's obviously reasonable and necessary for a variety of practical reasons.

Monitoring how someone else's systems are being used, even if they happen to be running some of your software or incorporate some equipment you made, is something else. If you're no longer responsible for those systems and ownership has been handed over, including remote access or phone-home functionality means crossing some lines that maybe shouldn't be crossed, particularly not without the full knowledge and genuine consent of the person whose system you are communicating with.

This is like saying nobody cared about mass surveillance before Snowden. The problem is apparent, but the realization isn't evenly distributed.

The only difference between this Lua server and other Software Augmented with Additional Surveillance (SaaS) is your trust. You apparently trust them to not sell the data trove to a surveillance company (or to a VC who eventually will), but I see no reason to. Heck, I've been answering no to popcon for over a decade now, even though Debian is outstandingly trustworthy.

Even Backblaze, a company whose core product is securely storing your data, just recently suffered from an in house attack - apparently their security team didn't foresee the need to protect against javascript injection by their own marketing stooges. When data is there for the taking, most people cannot restrain themselves - the problem is endemic. The only solution is to assure the privacy of data, through means such as Free software, E2E encryption, and not collecting it in the first place.

I sure as hell am making a fuss about it, which is exactly why I drive a car that's old enough to vote (and pretty soon will be old enough to drink, smoke, and/or buy a handgun in California).

There is no need to believe. Just have a look at F-Droid and GNU/Linux repositories.

Where do you draw the line between spyware and legitimate feature?

Where do you draw the line between malware and unintentional faulty code?

Review time is a scarce resource, and a bad actor will always find a way to bypass automated checks.

We could charge access to Debian repositories for example. For example one repo could have bugfixes, and the broader audience could have a 1-year-old repo. Sure your can build from source, get a zip from a torrent, or find someone who hosts a free mirror of the paid repo, but as a company it’s much easier to get it from the official source, for security compliance. (Btw I’ve always said I’d be happy to spend $200 per year per employee for a desktop OS of macOS quality, so probably much less for our servers).

This would offer price discrimination: - Free for individuals who want to spin off a small website, - Paid when you need to prove compliance to security regulations, - Developments still go to the pool of mankind’s marvels, instead of being locked with a commercial license and dying with the company, - Customer can still fork or fix a bug themselves by building from source.

The line that separates legitimate features and spyware is blurry, especially when a bad default ends up leaking information of the user.

With the apparent lack of both viruses and telemetry and the like in libre software even with the laughable default security of linux distros (your home containing basically everything free to read/modify for any user app), I would say that FOSS has quite a good track record in this metric. Nonetheless, a stronger security should be developed/strived for because it still boils down to a trust based system, but it makes me happy that the default of most people is to not cause harm.

FLOSS does not prevent malware from existing, but it makes it highly unprobable. You can always find bad examples, but how frequent are they?

I can pretty much guarantee that none of those "smart" TVs are running GPLv3 code.

Hehe, and then there's the Affero licence... https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl-policy/

The hypothetical scenario you describe is the one where you build Linux from scratch and you find a spyware. And this, AFAIK, is not happening right now, and one of the reasons is because it's open source and you can build it from the source code.

[1]: https://source.android.com/setup/start/licenses

And a typical android distribution - eg the one installed on a TV - includes a bunch of other software too.

And the hypothetical scenario I want is where I buy a TV and it doesn’t contain spyware. It seems that the existence of Linux has, if anything, made that less possible, given that any old hardware company can grab a Linux kernel and shove whatever spyware they want on top of it before selling it to me.

This has nothing to do with "So we have broad adoption of GPL software". Android (AOSP) is Apache. We don't have "broad adoption of GPL software". This scenario doesn't exist.

If the software of the TV is GPLv2, you must have access to the source code (even with Apache this can happen to some extent). The TV manufacturer must give you the source code of the software running on the TV (with GPLv3 they should also guarantee that you can re-flash your devices). This of course is an ideal world, and it's the freedom FSF searches for.

This way, you (or someone else) can audit the source code and check for spywares. You might be able to rebuild and reflash the software.

Unfortunately not everything is open source. On Linux you have (for example) NVIDIA drivers that are closed source. You can put a spyware in there, even if Linux is GPLv2.

EDIT: btw, you first asked "What’s the next step?". I believe the next step is to raise awareness of the rights one has over GPLvX software and to be able to truly enforce those rights. Like if you ask Samsung for the source code of your TV and they don't give it to you, you can (like) go to the nearest police station and press charges.

I haven't quite grokked why Linus decided GPLv3 was bad, but he strikes me as a pragmatist vs. the FSF idealists.

Linux just wants anyone who changes the code to contribute back. He doesn't care how they exploit the software he gives them.

Also, you seriously argue that availability of a great kernel is somehow a bad thing??

Android is built on GPLv2 Linux. GPLv2 does not protect the user against locked down hardware and firmware. In contrast, GPLv3+ does protect the user. The user does not have the freedom to modify their software on their hardware, so there is much less freedom.

You’re really just supporting the FSF’s arguments against non-free software.

But it's kinda obvious that the lack ob a big and serious actor is the main reason why nothing seriously bad ever happend in linux-land so far. Everyone switching to Open Source would change this and the watchmen would likely be unable to protect their world.

I mean just look at the mildly bad things happening on mainstream-systems, which everyone knows about and still ignores them, because "that's just how it is". At the end people willingly use bad software & services, because their subjective gain is higher than the small price they pay.

This is an inane argument. Limiting your liability isn't some kind of moral evil. The potential for harm due to defects always exists, and if you provide a good or service to someone, you have to negotiate with that person who will accept the liability for it.

Generic software licenses limit liability because it's usually much cheaper for the end user to assume the liability as they have far greater knowledge of their practical risks.

A developer can absolutely make an agreement in which he takes on the liability. He's going to need to be paid to take that liability on, to both spend the time to eliminate defects, but also to purchase insurance so that he isn't bankrupted when a defect inevitably gets through and causes harm.

Hmm... I hadn't though about the implications of this before. Is this a solution to the mythical funding balance the industry is failing to achieve? Enterprise software already operates like this. What if e.g. github reframed its project sponsorship model as something that involved getting maintainers setup with liability insurance and the ability to offer sponsors warranty and liability for their software.

My concern with the rust ecosystem right now is that it goes the way of node and projects just get littered with endless libraries that were fresh and hot at one point in time. Often times you open issues and it takes days or weeks to get a response if at all because the maintainers have moved on.

I'd be super interested in only using dependencies where I could subscribe to liability and warranty service after I've tried them out and they're want I'm going to roll with. And you would even potentially see interesting things like "pure" chains where all software used is covered by somebody.

This model would also have the interesting effect of promoting software design and language selection that results in "easier to warrant" not just "does the job" and maintainers that do a better job at writing good software would bubble to the top since their liability insurance premiums would stay cheap. If you write too much crappy software, at some point it becomes unaffordable and you go work for Facebook (it's a joke! you get the point).

I think it would be much more expensive. The developers of some library are having a hard time judging how much money somebody stakes on that library working perfectly. It might be that they'd lose an hour of work if they hit a bug, it might also be that a huge project fails with gigantic losses - it's hard to insure against that if you still want people to be able to afford it.

It's much easier to buy insurance on the user side where you know the potential impact (i.e. "my wordpress site will be offline for a day" vs "the oil rig I've run calculations for could sink if there was a bug").

For single projects this is definitely possible, at least theoretically. But I can't imagine it working for large ecosystems.

The ones who want this already have it through SLAs and the remainder can't afford it.

Package registries would shut down overnight.

in that light it is a moral obligation to remind consumers of the technology about their obligations. The legalese may sound just evasive, and motivated by the us environment of litigations by stupid people, but seriously: fitness for use is am obligation of the systems engineer, not the provider of FOSS.

elisa.tech is a community to enable Linux in safety applications. even there, the responsibility is with the consumer of their work, they also just seek methods and inputs for system safety engineering, which, when used by a system safety engineer may lead to a certifiable, and then liability covered device. like an adas system powered by Linux.

This would also apply to the problem of web search and social network monopolies. The way I see it: let Google and FB develop or host a plurality of ranking, filtering and UI variants, and let the users decide their preferred flavor. Then they can't complain about bias. There would be a Republican Google and a Democrat Google and a EFF Google and a BLM Google to pick from. They are now like single TV channels with unified editorial stance, they should be more like cable networks. Give people the remote for content ranking, filtering and UI.

and you choose your profile not via drop down but with your engagement with and liking and disliking of content?

Lots of indirect attacks on "free software" once RMS is back on the board. I honestly don't understand it - lot of people talking about "leadership" and free software "losing" against open source. The proponents of free software have absolutely no desire to win against anybody nor does it need any kind of leadership to make it attractive for corporates or any other group of people. We just believe that users of software should have certain freedoms and try and use software which respects these.

In HN particularly, I often see the argument that GPL restricts freedoms of certain kinds of users i.e. the developers. We honestly don't care - if you don't like free software, please use open source and celebrate that you have "won" against us.

Why do you have to go anywhere? If all the evidence you have against someone is "they expressed an opinion I didn't like" I suggest, then, the problem isn't them.

It's a strongly principled organization that exists to advocate for the things it believes.

In the context of someone joining a board of an organization like that, their expressed opinions absolutely matter.

Sure, but not an opinion on every issue in the world - their mission has always been to promote the user's freedom to use and modify software as the user sees fit. Other issues, whether important or not, may not be relevant to preserving software freedoms.

> It's a strongly principled organization that exists to advocate for the things it believes.

Correct, so why is everyone up in arms when they are refusing to advocate for things that are not of interest to them?

> In the context of someone joining a board of an organization like that, their expressed opinions absolutely matter.

Only as far as the organisation's mission statement. I would be (rightly) kicked out of my organisation should I publicly mobilise a mob against my employer for the company's lack of interest in abused puppies at the SPCA.

People disagreeing with RMS's expressed opinions on (for example) what constitutes a legal age of consent disqualify themselves as leadership material for an organisation committed to software freedoms.

The people who support software freedoms know where to go to get lectures on legal age of consent should they want to hear it. Injecting unrelated political ideology into a group committed to software freedoms is as welcome as posting SPAM for ED to a mailing list for cryptography.

“Everyone” is not.

Of the people up in arms, some (including at least one FSF board member who resigned, and many individuals and entities that contribute—or did until recently—to the FSF and it's projects) are part of the “they” and clearly so have an interest.

And others are just on the outside advocating for things they care about, just as vociferously as FSF partisans do (and no more—though also no less—annoyingly to people who aren't concerned about the same issues.)

Writing good software is hard. I’d recon it’s similar to mathematics in difficulty often. It’s worth it to consider someone can both be awful in other factors of their life but still make meaningful contributions to society through things like math or software. It helps that he’s always willing to show you his code for audit purposes.

So instead of rushing to exclude people from society, society needs to provide people enough room to be themselves to keep from dangerous fiddling.

Further, forgiveness is a more critical tool to the forgiver than the forgiven. To forgive a grievance isn’t to forget it. It’s to put an end to the part of your resources devoted to punishing your opponent or thinking ill. That frees up those resources for more positive uses. The forgiven never needed to expend resources to earn your forgiveness and thus doesn’t have the same resource commitments - hence forgiveness offers less to the forgiven than the forgiver.

To reject a completely correct mathematical concept because it was contributed by an awful person--even the worst person in history--would be madness, and any attempts to suppress or disenfranchise the work of "inconvenient contributors" indicates that you're not actually pursuing mathematics, but engaging in political warfare.

But I fear you’re being over constrained by this specification. My larger point is it’s important, very, to not draw too many lines and wind up with a “polite party” of 0.

Absolutely.

> But I fear you’re being over constrained by this specification. My larger point is it’s important, very, to not draw too many lines and wind up with a “polite party” of 0.

I'm not sure I understand where we disagree. Or I'm missing what you are getting at with this paragraph, my apologies. I think contributions to mathematics should be open to anyone, everyone, and everything.

If you believe there is value in campaigning for increased freedom for users of software, then you might benefit from the FSF having concrete campaign goals and the ability to be taken seriously.

Inviting RMS back to the board does not help them in that regard.

Your ability to benefit from the software produced by RMS has no dependency on his being elevated to a seat on the board of an organization whose opinion might be sought, say, if congress were debating laws mandating access to source code of voting machines.

But that doesn’t entitle him to a seat on the board for all time regardless of how his presence there might affect how the FSF is perceived.

There’s no conflict there at all. That the FSF lacks the imagination to conceive of a way forward without RMS on the board definitely supports the OP argument that free software has a leadership development problem and lacks a vision of any path forward that will tangibly advance ‘freedom’ for software users.

I'm not sure how meditating on it is supposed to negate the latter. Nor how that is supposed to provide a space in which software is free of the shackles of the misogyny of the popular.

[1]: Literally just listen to the women who have had to work along side him on the MIT campus for decades. The fact that it was a known fact in the whisper network on campus and that they had developed tactics for "dealing with it" shows you pretty much everything you need to know.

I would like to listen to what they have to say. This is the first I'm hearing of this, and I've been following RMS and the FSF since their inception. The term "dealing with it" is too vague - are we talking sexual assault, sexual harassment, or RMS being difficult to work with? These are dramatically different scenarios yet they all require a means for "dealing with it."

I'm taking you to task because you're now crossing the line from things RMS has said to things he may have done. If you're going to accuse RMS of sexual harassment then you're going to need to help bring this to light, not just spread hearsay. His alleged victims deserve that and the free software community needs to know the details of any alleged misconduct.

That's because you haven't tried. You're biased in ways you don't see. I'm not pointing a finger or trying criticize here. You seem to have a lot of anger - figure out where that comes from.

I'm biased against inappropriate conduct towards people and a lack of respect for other people.

I'm not even angry about this, just deeply disappointed in the FSF and their decision to put one man above the voices of countless people who he has repeatedly acted inappropriately towards and has neither acknowledged nor attempted to improve his behaviour.

In other words, they chose to resist the cancel culture, stick to what they believe is right instead of appeasing an angry mob, and ignore the obviously ill-intended mischaracterizations spreading over the social media.

I'd say they did a good job.

A good read, referenced on Wikipedia: https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web

"Acting inappropriately" is not a crime. If you dislike his behavior, don't come near him - you're free to do so. Trying to force your way of thinking on him, instead, is wrong. The fact that he used to ask random women to have sex with him (actually, to "go out with him") does not make him misogynist. The fact that he said that "14 and above" people should be able to have sex if they want, and that "abstaining from sex after puberty is unnatural" does not make him a pedophile. The fact that he questions the use of "sexual assault" phrase in a situation where the "assaulted" person "appears entirely willing" does not make him a rapist.

You might not like his "inappropriate conduct" and that's ok. He, on the other hand, might not like your standards of what is appropriate or not, and that's also ok. I, for one, don't like the hypocrisy and puritanism you seem to espouse. I wouldn't want to be your friend, what with having to worry about my "conduct" constantly. But that's ok, I don't have to be your friend. It's all good. At least until you start forcing your (to me - misguided) values on others, start forming a mob with the intention of lynching him (or me), and try to shame all the people with contrary views into silence.

It's about consent. You do not do things to someone, without someone else's consent. An example: If you repeatedly prod me, and I ask you to stop, and you carry on going -- that makes you the asshole. That I asked you to stop, and you ignored me, does not put the blame on me.

You claim he is not a misogynist. The fact that he makes women, in general, uncomfortable by repeatedly making unwanted and unwarranted passes at them constantly -- to the point at which almost all of the women who had to deal with him bought specific plants just to deter him, shows that he is not fit to lead a movement. Because he does not listen to others when they ask him to stop disrespecting their boundaries.

The fact that, when he was asked to stop soliciting women for sex, that he circumvented these rules by passing out cards that asked for sex, shows he fundamentally misunderstands the reason he was asked to stop. That he fundamentally does not understand, or has no will to understand, accept and more importantly respect the personal boundaries of the people -- more often than not women -- around him.

It's not like he was never given any warning. People asked him to stop making the women around him deeply uncomfortable, repeatedly, and he repeatedly refused to listen. At this point, 20 to 40 years later, this is a pattern of abuse.

If this happened at a workplace, they would fire you. If this happened anywhere in society, they would remove you. The FSF did exactly that because people exercised their free speech to say no more to this.

When you constantly, repeatedly act like an asshole in public, and show no respect for the boundaries and space of other people, that will make people very understandably irritated, even angry if it happens constantly. We even have a legal definition for this enshrined in our law -- harassment -- to account for the fact that doing something to another person, or a group of people, without their consent, is psychologically and physically damaging to their health.

That is why he is not fit to lead a movement. That is why people are irate and angered by the refusal of people to listen to the voices of others.

Come on, that is very hard to believe.

If you're so disgusted by RMS that you refuse to use any of his software, I'd suggest therapy.

That's the problem. RMS did never harass a woman in his entire life; he may have expressed comments that today, especially in the post #metoo era, appear as inconvenient, but that's it; does he deserve to be painted like he was a sexual assaulter (which he is not, has never been, not even close) by multiple sides at the same time? Why all that negative press? Doesn't this raise some warning flags?

The reason looks very clear to me: he is stubbornly inflexible in his concept of what Free Software means, which is an extremely good thing; he kept the helm straight no matter the external pressure to stop, where others would have sold themselves and the community for 30 pieces of silver. There are huge interests in "killing" him publicly, which would mean destroying the Free Software movement, sell out the Foundation and giving full powers to whomever has to gain big money from that. Just follow the money trail.

Not one women including the "evidence" gathered in the original Medium posts mention that. Actual examples they do mention are quite common for socially inept individuals.

> Parading a bed

For a long time, Stallman lived in his office. I have known other academics who preferred to do the same. Again, not one person has come forward and said that Stallman ever invited them to that bed.

> how one shouldn't assume a minor (that was provided by epstein) wasn't willing to have sex

He did not say that at all. Re-read the emails again. Hint, he uses the word "presented" which completely changes the meaning of the sentence. For someone precise like Stallman, every word matters. Anyway, I have read the emails multiple times now and his only message was to reconsider all the facts first given the serious allegation of "sexual assault" on Minsky. Just because the media has twisted it does not make them true.

And you may already be aware of this, but for any third parties reading this, please be aware that these types of things are not a one-off innocent mistake. When you start actually looking you realize that literally everything the corporate press outputs is all part of a carefully crafted narrative, and at no point does actual capital-T Truth come into play.

See also: Gell-Mann Amnesia effect (except more malicious)

However your characterization of his comments wrt Minksy does make me question your credibility. If you couldn’t honestly characterize them, it is more likely that you could be equally disingenuous in recounting “independent allegations”.

Sexual relations with minors outside of Romeo and Juliet cases is always sexual assault, and it's even moreso when you're meeting those minors after stepping into the "Lolita Express", at the direct behest of someone that was publicly known to be in the sex trafficking business. Where I live that is unambiguously at least sexual assault, if not worse.

“Where you live” should not be the determinant here

I don’t see how Stallman’s admittedly autistic comments are damning. He was pointing out that it is very plausible that to Minsky the girl presented herself as willing and consenting despite secretly being coerced by Epstein.

Does the victim, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, agree or disagree with that denial?

If you read her actual deposition [0] it isn't very clear. It is clear that Epstein/Maxwell told her to have sex with Minsky, but it isn't clear whether it actually happened or not. She isn't explicit on that point, and the questioner doesn't ask her to elaborate.

As far as I am aware, in her subsequent public statements and interviews, she has never clarified this specific issue.

Obviously that makes a huge difference as to how one morally judges Minsky. Worse case scenario, Minsky was a willing and knowing client of Epstein's sex trafficking ring. Best case scenario, he displayed poor judgement in continuing to associate with Epstein after his conviction, but was innocent of any participation in Epstein's sexual crimes. I don't think we have enough facts to decide between those two possibilities, but maybe in the absence of evidence we ought to assume the best of people (and especially of the deceased.)

[0] https://drive.google.com/file/d/14ZOEKwoBnDKUFI1hLbFJH5nsUFx... pages numbered 204–205 (PDF pages 182-183)

I don't understand how you could pretend that Epstein's coercion was secret. It was literally a matter of public record.

Obviously I'm not endorsing having sex with one of Epstein's victims...

No, it is irrelevant (that alone should not lead to letting him go).

The many cases of actual in-person harassments are the important parts, like actually grabbing a colleague’s ass and there is plenty of others - just because “that side” is wrong on the former point, doesn’t make them wrong on the other.

I think we need to have actual standards of evidence when it comes to booting someone not just from the FSF but the community as a whole

"p.s.: In the closet-sized "office" Bushnell, McGrath, and I shared for a time we did have some spider plants as part of a running silly joke. They did not actually scare RMS away OF COURSE"

-- Thomas Lord.

Please note the capitalised "OF COURSE" and reflect on the veracity of your "common knowledge".

You should always question what is "common knowledge" especially when it comes to emotional issues where prejudice is rampant.

You've made the claim, now back it up - otherwise you're spreading hearsay.

It's easier to understand (I think) in the context of EEE and FUD. There's a reason why the big corporate players in the FOSS space - the FAANGs and Microsofts and the rest - prefer "open source" over "free software": they seek to control the movement, and want to leash it. The idea of users truly owning the software they use is antithetical to traditional corporate software development. Software freedom, in short, hurts their bottom line.

The smear campaigns against RMS and other free software advocates, the promotion of kafkaesque CoCs, the trend of ditching actual FOSS licenses for "almost" FOSS licenses, the constant push toward locked down hardware and opaque remotely-hosted software... these things are always wrapped up in what look like the best of intentions, but it's no coincidence that they consistently have corporate "allies" and consistently target anticorporate elements.

The 1st reason behind these attack is to replace him with someone who can be easily controlled. Ask yourself a hundred times if you really want to replace someone who has odd ideas or is unlikable to some, with someone else who would destroy in a short time the work thousands developers did in decades.

Second, organizations like Conservancy, EFF, FSFE, and many others don't seem to have any difficulty finding good public speakers.

The idea that we have to choose between RMS and some corporate drone is a false dichotomy plain an simple.

Well, I don't qualify as a developer, but if I was one I would badly want a good leader. When projects grow, be it in distance, time and number of people, you need good leaders (leaders, not dictators, although sometimes we would have some use for them as well). Broadly speaking a leader is someone who prevents UI wars before they happen, someone who will give the best common base to develop different audio servers without having them stomp on each others feet, someone who will prevent useful but not fun parts of a system to rot because all developers want to work on other parts that are more fun, etc. And with regards to the FSF, being a leader means also acting as the worst possible enemy of any entity wanting to violate open licenses by taking open code, closing it and make loads of money from it giving nothing in return, something RMS has been really good at, including teaching about the problem in very small conferences lots of spokespersons wouldn't accept to talk at. It's a shitty job that brings both friends and enemies, with the enemies being often among the most powerful, not something to be regarded as a prize. Being just a spokesperson, and technically speaking RMS is a good one, isn't enough anymore, IMO.

"The idea that we have to choose between RMS and some corporate drone is a false dichotomy plain an simple."

In a perfect world I would agree; RMS would step down to be replaced by the best possible candidate, and everyone is happy, case closed. Unfortunately smear campaigns orchestrated with the intent of removing someone from a seat, ready to be occupied by some "friend" aren't new. The way this is going seems to suggest that someone, somewhere, is ready to replace him with someone who would work against the Free Software community interests.

Also, if you do not feel represented by an organisation, why not do the OpenSource-thing and fork the organisation?

As of right now, the FSF Europe is no longer joined with the FSF

That's some cheeky phrasing.

> FLOSS is permanently under attack, from the industry

Sure it is, and having a spokeperson that act very poorly in public does not help a bit.

> from the legal framework

Huh?

> NOT going with the flow is exactly what us other people expect RMS to do.

What is "the flow"? Doing very weird things in public? Hitting hard on women at conferences? Pleasing corporations?

> why not do the OpenSource-thing and fork the organisation?

We did: Conservancy, EFF, FSFE are thriving. (Why are you assuming we didn't?)

I’m sure to a sick mind sexually harassing others feels convenient at the time, so apparently he is not that good at restraining himself...

For the first two perhaps there is an org that better aligns with your goals. Unless you are heavily invested into the FSF and wish to change its direction I think putting your energy into an org that aligns with you is a better way to spend your time.

If its the last one please explain to me how that isn't racist/sexist.

But hey! I said I wasn't sure.

As a secondary activity, they support some related freedom-increasing topics (Right to Repair).

If I look at outcomes, as measured by the adoption of open-source software, it’s hard for me to judge FSF as ineffective. If you want to argue that all of that adoption was incidental or accidental, entirely unrelated to the FSF, you’re welcome to advance that argument, but it will require more evidence than “I thought it was pretty clear”

And why does the free software movement need a legislative agenda? I've never seen legislation concerning software that wasn't horribly flawed. Legislation is the product of lobbying and the ignorance of legislators. If the FSF promoted a "legislative agenda", then I for one would have much diminished confidence in it.

The fsfe now also officially cut their ties to FSF because of RMS' reapportionment.

That's a good reason to have a legislative agenda. Laws will be written, and some will likely impact the FSF's interests. If they send lobbyists and lawyers to argue for specific wording, the laws might not suck so much.

As of right now, they are separate organizations.

Wait, WHAT?!

This is not an accidental negation, he refers to it in the rest of the paragraph.

This person must be trolling or testing bullshit arguments to see which ones sort of fly, for use in whatever bullshit-oriented job they do.

The fact that this got a lot of exposure should serve as a warning sign though. The FSF is vulnerable and struggling to maintain relevance. Both the re-hiring and the controversy around RMS illustrate that in my opinion: whenever the discourse gets diverted away from Free software, it's a distraction they can ill afford.

Either they didn't know that this would happen or they wanted it to happen. In any case, they're now even more vulnerable to these kinds of hit pieces, and I'm afraid the RMS issue could generate enough public interest for larger publications to execute successful strikes against the idea of Free software itself.

What is the "much evidence" which the author refers to? I'm genuinely interested; if anyone here knows of any such evidence, please, tell us! What is it?

My personal experience is the exact opposite; I have not personally found closed-source libraries to offer better quality in general. Of course, there is a lot of junk out there which is open source. But most of the small number of rock-solid, tried-tested-and-true code libraries which I am aware of are open source.

My worst experience has been with a proprietary rack mount appliance. The closed source software was absolute garbage. It wasn't even a library, it's even more fundamental. It was network equipment, you know, a problem domain that didn't change significantly in the last 20 years. Crap closed source software exists, it just has a harder time propagating because it fails to bring in money. Meanwhile any random FOSS project can last a human lifetime, assuming it is archived properly.

Which is why FUD like this is so dangerous. It makes sense in PHB land where they don't understand that a programmer doesn't just use the first hit for a given functionality, but investigates whether it's actually worthwhile to use.

Just thinking out loud. Anyways, I think you may have identified what the author of the piece had in mind.

There is so much disinformation from an apparently knowledgeable person, that it has to be intentional. No way an ignorant person would create all those falsehoods in the article by a random chance of being mistaken.

No, there's no way someone can be that stupid. This is intentional evil.

Unfortunately, my experience in various industries leads me to disagree.

We're in a place where non-programmers and non-hackers are waking up to the importance of transparency and data ownership, and there's no way to achieve that without free software.

I like the idea of public software mentioned in the article, which I understand to be software which is fully transparent and verifiable by everyone, which also sounds a lot like free software.

I think the term "public" is more understandable by a non-technical person, and I may adopt using it after some consideration.

Tangential nitpick: There's no "runaway" part of an exponential curve. At every point along the x-axis (typically time), the curve looks exactly the same. This property is often abused by writers who want to make you believe that now is the time when everything changes – although in fairness, they often deceive themselves.

If you don't believe me, look at plots [1] and [2]. In both cases it looks like the past was flat and the "knee" of the curve is right in front of you, promising an exciting future!

[1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot+exp%28x%29+x+%3D+...

[2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot+exp%28x%29+x+%3D+...

By degrading the language, journalists deprive themselves of the ability to talk clearly about the spread of the pandemic. I think this abuse of "exponential" is supposed to make the writer look erudite, even though they haven't a clue what the word means.

Update: I guess this is a tangent on a tangent, pun intended.

Any yet this "absolute" viewpoint is never really absolute, but always relative to the authors current position in time – as if by coincidence.

EDIT: To clarify, when an author uses an exponential curve to make the "runaway" argument, they almost never justify why the current absolute value of the curve should have special significance over the absolute values at other points in time. For example, in forgotmypw17's original post, there's no explanation why the current status of free software is at a special threshold – or what "exponential curve" they're even talking about.

In a limited world, exponential changes are sometimes catastrophic.