RMS and his actions/policies/FREE SOFTWARE

4 Antworten [Letzter Beitrag]
Zen_Floater2
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Beigetreten: 03/24/2019

After having posted this thread:
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/end-trisquel-we-know-it

"The END of Trisquel as we know it"

Once again, there were many comments posted to that thread and I gained more incitement into the mentality of the FREE SOFTWARE COMMUNITY...

It forced me to reflect on the past, the present, and our future.

RMS started the FREE SOFTWARE movement and the GPL license.
In the beginning years, RMS felt that the license was the only key you needed for success in developing a FREE SOFTWARE COMMUNITY.

When the internet became readily available to the general public in the 90's, RMS began to make speeches and later video's covering the subject of users privacy rights.

Of these many PSA video's RMS did, the one related to Trisquel which sticks out in my mind was this one.

RMS on Ubuntu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP8CNp-vksc

What also struck me as funny was RMS directly dumping Debian as the FSF endorsed OS of choice for this new OS called Trisquel. Trisquel was based on Debian at first but later rebased itself on the 'evil' Ubuntu OS.

Trisquel did provide it's users a dependable, modern OS which didn't spy on it's users and did not include any non-free software.

But, when I do a search for these two search strings "RMS on systemD" "RMS on snaps" I get nothing - zippo... RMS has had nothing to say on these two subjects.

That's a pitty because RMS and the FSF have told us all that the BSD license is a FREE SOFTWARE LICENSE.

Let's take the first search term "systemD"..
systemD is for Linux only. You can not port systemD to any of the bsd distro's.
You also can not port systemD to any OS running the GNU/Hurd. So, RMS never put his hand up to the implementation of systemD and it's effects on his FREE SOFTWARE neighbors.

Trisquel removed Flatpak's from their distro and are in the process or removing snap's as well. Flatpaks and snaps have non-free software. You also can not port either one of these systems to a bsd distro or GNU/Hurd.

RMS did not put his hand up to Flatpaks nor snaps, that I can find.

RMS was not concerned with the kinds of damage done when you ignore interoperability amongst the FREE SOFTWARE "COMMUNITY"... "COMMUNITY"...

Even on Slackware, you can install access of Flatpaks but you can not install kdenlive as a Flatpak as it has a systemD dependency. The two walk hand in hand.

On my last thread, the end of Trisquel as we know it,,, I posted the following link to a video from Martin W.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLm3HkZ-sMs

Martin has been made head of canonical desktops.

Martin has clearly stated in this video that the goal of canonical will be to outsource not only all the desktop apps to snaps but server infrastructure as well. Your LAMP stack will be a snap. Your postgres will be a snap. ect..

NetBSD will have to develop or find or implement various libraries and daemons to emulate systemD to run may of the apps we see in Linux. So will Gentoo, so will Slackware, so will VOID, so will GUIX, and on and on. It wasn't just the bsd camps who have been crippled by this.

These projects have limited manpower. And they are spending more and more of their time just emulating things like systemD, coding over radeon and intel drm into their kernels from the Linux kernel, and soon they will find that all app vendors offer their programs only in a snap format.

Why will they only offer it in a snap format??? Because they have limited manpower as well. They won't have the energy to produce source tar balls and help these various distro's get their software compiled and running with the right libraries as they once did. It's easier to just use snaps. Debian packages and RPM will slowly become a thing of the past just as the source tar balls disappeared. This has happened before as Pat V. of Slackware has been quoted as saying often the only way we can get source is via a SRPM.

The 'evil' operating system, known as Ubuntu, is still alive and well after having miserably failed to implement upstart, mir and unity. They go on to destroy the FREE SOFTWARE COMMUNITY in other ways.

And what of the magic of RMS, the FSF, and their Trisquel endorsement to the world? Where did that magic go which was used to tame that beast known as Ubuntu and produce Trisquel???

And this is exactly why, in my mind alone, I have the following things recorded.

GUIX is our replacement of all UNIX like OS's. It replaces ARCH linux as well as GENTOO. Someday, GUIX will even take on NetBSD for portability. GUIX is the sharp end of the GNU stick...

Devuan for our stable FREE SOFTWARE OS. Because Devuan is a rebel. It's going to break away from Debian. Debian will eventually suffer the same fate as Ubuntu. snaps will eat them both. Let' Devuan stop feeding over Debian's shoulder and make them stand on their own, replacing Debian.

And Trisquel should be based on Devuan, not Debian or Ubuntu.
Because in order to be a FSF OS, you have to use only Free Software, you must respect users privacy and freedom, you must also respect community interoperability. Otherwise, you really have nothing.

You have nothing but another mess to move to somewhere else...

As with GUIX, Trisquel should not be holding a cup out on a street corner wondering which bridge it will sleep under this cold winters night.

There are only two types of people. Those who support commercialization of FREE SOFTWARE. And those who DO NOT... There is no in-between here..

And that is what RMS should have stood up for. Not divide and conquer.
Not turn your head the other way when you implemented something which ONLY WORKS ON LINUX and heck, only certain kinds of LINUX structures ,,,, even worse....

Free License, Freedom, Privacy, Interoperability... FFPI

Charlie

Magic Banana

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I am a translator!

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Beigetreten: 07/24/2010

Gosh, another CalmStorm who even believes it takes developers "energy to produce source tar balls"!

RMS says "selling free software is OK": https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

Zen_Floater2
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Beigetreten: 03/24/2019

snicker,,, hey,,, they don't have a + button on this forum so I can push it for your comment....

How about, commercialization via entrapment.

chaosmonk

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Beigetreten: 07/07/2017

I agree with some of your points, particularly some of the points about Snap and Flatpak, and that adoption of systemd as dependency of other projects creates extra work for distros like Guix, Slackware, and the BSDs. I find some of your points questionable though.

> Why will they only offer it in a snap format??? Because they have limited manpower as well. They won't have the energy to produce source tar balls and help these various distro's get their software compiled and running with the right libraries as they once did. Debian packages and RPM will slowly become a thing of the past just as the source tar balls disappeared.

Producing a source tarball is trivial. I doubt that this will become an issue. There might be some cases in which developers reduce work for distros by cooperating with them over packaging, and in in those cases it would indeed mean a little more work for maintainers if that cooperation stopped, but it would not be fatal to debian packaging. Much software is already packaged for distros by the maintainers alone without any cooperation with the upstream developer.

The method by which the developer distributes binaries (deb, snap, PPA) matters to users who want to install the software from out-of-repo, but it does not matter to Debian maintainers, who only need the source tarball.

> Devuan for our stable FREE SOFTWARE OS. Because Devuan is a rebel. It's going to break away from Debian. Debian will eventually suffer the same fate as Ubuntu. snaps will eat them both. Let' Devuan stop feeding over Debian's shoulder and make them stand on their own, replacing Debian.

What are you suggesting that Devuan do? Should they begin debianizing source tarballs from scratch and maintaining the packages entirely by themsleves instead of starting with the source packages that have already been debianized and are maintained by hundreds of Debian volunteers? This seems like a huge waste of man hours, because you would have two distros doing the exact same work at the same time redundantly.

I see Ubuntu's migration toward snaps as a potential problem for Trisquel, but not one for Debian. Debian does not rely on Ubuntu to debianize packages (it's the other way around), so even if Ubuntu stops providing debian packages for some software, this will not create extra work for Debian.

Zen_Floater2
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Beigetreten: 03/24/2019

>>> Producing a source tarball is trivial. I doubt that this will become an issue. There might be some cases in which developers reduce work for distros by cooperating with them over packaging, and in in those cases it would indeed mean a little more work for maintainers if that cooperation stopped, but it would not be fatal to debian packaging. Much software is already packaged for distros by the maintainers alone without any cooperation with the upstream developer.

>>> The method by which the developer distributes binaries (deb, snap, PPA) matters to users who want to install the software from out-of-repo, but it does not matter to Debian maintainers, who only need the source tarball.

Certainly, today, anyone can produce a source tarball. The question unanswered is will they...
Further, will they communicate with all these distro's to help them install that program and get it running?
And again, if you play that video Martin was in, the effort is to create a snap which can run across "" 50 different Linux OS's"""" per Martin... That would mean 50 linux os's he's aware of which have systemD and snap capabilities.
In Martin's view, there will be NO passing of sources anymore. Just these snaps. As with Flatpaks, they don't pass out source code for their stuff either. You can make your own Flatpaks or snaps or electron apps, but the machinery which builds them is functionally proprietary.
It would certainly be less workload for these app vendors to just deal with the complaints and problems produced by one universal snap than the issues of 1,000 different distro's.
Your entire argument hinges it's bet on the notion that source will be readily available AND they have some kind of commitment toward porting their package to different OS's.
Then we consider the statistics Martin brought up in the video that by turning one app into a snap increased it's distribution over 10 fold. Which means more emphasis will go on that app and the dependency lineup they have in that container, not your particular OS. Considering how many containers Flatpak has alone, if you were to try and support these kinds of apps on a conventional OS, you'd have a library HELL to deal with. It is just not feasible.
Overtime, the support most apps had for multiple environments such as we have now, will degrade to the point they no longer function outside of their pre-planed environments. It takes serious man hours and planning to make today's apps support the WIDE/WIDE range of environments across all these distributions they try to get them to run in. All this will be GONE!!! GONE!!!! BYE BYE!!!!
And don't forget,, your a GUIX fan just like I am. That's what GUIX was all about was supporting this multi-dimensional library revision hell in a sane manner. It is a issue.... right...
Granted, there will probably still be source tarballs out there for people, just like people will use toilet paper from a gas station to blow their nose...

>>> What are you suggesting that Devuan do? Should they begin debianizing source tarballs from scratch and maintaining the packages entirely by themsleves instead of starting with the source packages that have already been debianized and are maintained by hundreds of Debian volunteers? This seems like a huge waste of man hours, because you would have two distros doing the exact same work at the same time redundantly.

Yes, I'm suggesting Devuan break away from Debian. Using the same argument you just gave me, it makes little sense to run Devuan because there is Debian. What will happen to Ubuntu will happen to Debian because their tied.
The argument between upstart and systemD. Their hooked at the hips. It makes absolutely NO SENSE, to stay with an organization which has already screwed you. That's my point. And we need to show people there is a quantifiable difference between Devuan and Debian in code base. Make Devuan independent.

>>>> I see Ubuntu's migration toward snaps as a potential problem for Trisquel, but not one for Debian. Debian does not rely on Ubuntu to debianize packages (it's the other way around), so even if Ubuntu stops providing debian packages for some software, this will not create extra work for Debian.

But that's exactly how Devuan was created. Devuan was created from the hundreds of irritated developers leaving Debian and systemD to create Devuan over their interaction with Canonical. I certainly can not say that Debian is not affected by Canonical in any way. And I certainly won't make the statement that snaps couldn't cause Debian to be the next in line to drop repo support for packages over time. Sure, debian invented things like the PPA. And gave the PPA to Canonical as a gift??? Right???? I mean, what do you mean here.... .....
Certainly, Debian is directly affected by Canonical. There's no doubt about it.. right....