Post 2115857 by snowdrift@social.coop
(DIR) More posts by snowdrift@social.coop
(DIR) Post #2025729 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2018-12-16T03:25:43Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
'How I Quit Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Amazon' - Daniel Oberhaushttps://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ev3qw7/how-to-quit-apple-microsoft-google-facebook-amazon
(DIR) Post #2025730 by clacke@libranet.de
2018-12-16T04:05:56Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
Linux violates the first rule of getting people to use a technology, which is that it shouldn’t feel like you’re using technology at all. To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke, it should feel like magic. Linux does not feel like magic; it feels like a pain in the ass—at least until you’ve figured out how to use a command terminal.
(DIR) Post #2025731 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2018-12-16T07:32:56Z
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@clacke magic, you mean like casting spells, using invocations found in obscure spellbooks? Isn't that exactly what using the command line is like? ;-P
(DIR) Post #2025732 by clacke@libranet.de
2018-12-16T08:43:17Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
That's weaving magic. Clarke is talking about being handed an enchanted object the inner workings of which you cannot fathom but which somehow Just Does your bidding.
(DIR) Post #2025733 by Wolf480pl@niu.moe
2018-12-16T09:17:30Z
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@clacke @strypey but isn't understanding the inner workings the whole reason why left Windows and switched to Linux?
(DIR) Post #2026808 by Wolf480pl@niu.moe
2018-12-16T10:36:17Z
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@clacke @strypey "It felt like I had real control over my computer, as opposed to being forced to use applications based on what the designers thought their users wanted."
(DIR) Post #2041609 by clacke@libranet.de
2018-12-17T01:26:55Z
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@Wolf480pl Good point. But I think it wouldn't be a drawback if people could switch to Linux first, and then gradually, as they find the motivation, learn how it works and how to adapt it.Now, I think Linux on the desktop is already viable, it is pretty usable, and I have non-geeks using it without complaint for the usual surfing and document editing. But the article shows that clearly we're not quite as there as I think.
(DIR) Post #2045491 by scolobb@bidule.menf.in
2018-12-16T08:46:22.153750Z
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@clacke @strypey Well, I guess it depends one again on your bidding. Personally, I have no idea how shell works (well, not a detailed one).Granted, my argument is a little bit artificial, but my point is that being a black box and doing something that someone wants may depend on the point of view of the someone quite a lot.
(DIR) Post #2045492 by clacke@libranet.de
2018-12-17T01:23:14Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@scolobb @strypey The concrete comparison would be between Android, which your average person off the street actually uses, and bash, which they don't.Of course using the enchanted broom limits what they can do. But if you hand them bristles, a rod and a spell book they won't make a broom, they don't have the time.This is where we derail into a subthread that completely destroys the metaphor and talks about making magic more composable and spells better scoped, and I end up linking to hackernoon.com/some-tentative-…, niu.moe/@enkiv2/99366610716102… and niu.moe/@enkiv2/99366404418510… by @enkiv2 .
(DIR) Post #2045493 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-17T01:29:06Z
0 likes, 2 repeats
@clacke This is a good point and also there's a kind of parallel to the free software / alternative software movements among magick practitioners. In the 70s chaos magick showed up & claimed that certain kinds of rules in the pseudo-masonic orders of the western occult traditionwere not so necessary & basically just gatekeeping.@scolobb @strypey
(DIR) Post #2045494 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-17T01:32:50Z
1 likes, 2 repeats
@clacke Chaos magick pushed in favor of eclectic personal magickal traditions composed of the most effective pieces from other traditions, a stripped-down minimalism where only effective components were kept (making magick accessible to the poor, who have limited access to traditional ingredients of folk magic & no access to the rareified tools of the western occult tradition's boys-clubs), rapid experimentation, and free information sharing@scolobb @strypey
(DIR) Post #2045495 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-17T01:35:22Z
1 likes, 2 repeats
@clacke There's known overlap between free software folks & chaos magick folks (for basically the same reason kink & furries are overrepresented in free software). Chaos magick & free software share an origin: RMS got the idea of copyleft from a jake, while chaos magick is a more serious interpretation of discordian spiritual ideas.@scolobb @strypey
(DIR) Post #2045496 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-17T01:38:20Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@clacke Anyway, my point is sort ofI don't use sigils from old grimoires or invoke goetic demons for basically the same reason that I prefer to compile my own software & keep the source visible.(And, this is why Clarke's third law pisses me off.)@scolobb @strypey
(DIR) Post #2045497 by clacke@libranet.de
2018-12-17T01:48:26Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@enkiv2 @scolobb @strypey I interpret Clarke's law a bit like the idea that nobody knows how to make a pencil. Our society could not exist if every person reasoned everything from first principles. It's good for us to dive into abstractions and accepted truths and shake them, but no person can do it for everything, and I think the law just means "Thy Abstractions Shall Not Leak Or Otherwise Suck".
(DIR) Post #2045498 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2018-12-17T05:36:15Z
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@clacke fair enough, but this brings me back to your original comment, which I think was totally true when I started experimenting with #RedHat and #Mandrake in the early 2000s. But more recently, I've helped newbies install and use #Mint (or #Trisquel if they hardware supports it), and they can do everything they need to do in the GUI.@enkiv2 @scolobb
(DIR) Post #2045499 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2018-12-17T05:38:42Z
2 likes, 2 repeats
@clacke the main reason people don't use a GNU/Linux distro on their desktops and laptops is the same reason most people don't use #Replicant, #LineageOS, or #SailFish on their mobile device. Which is that most people are not confident about installing a postmarket OS on any device. That's why I'm using the vanilla #Android that came with my mobile, despite using #Trisquel on laptops and desktops for years. I don't know how to swap out the OS without bricking the device.@enkiv2 @scolobb
(DIR) Post #2056428 by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2018-12-17T08:42:20Z
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@strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb Exactly. It’s the same reason why people don’t buy a car and replace the engine. Only enthusiasts do that. Most people just buy a car and drive it. And if it breaks down, they take it to the shop to be serviced. The problem with FOSS is we build engines and then blame people for driving cars. We must start making cars (and we are… e.g., see @Purism)
(DIR) Post #2056540 by tleydxdy@pl.smuglo.li
2018-12-17T17:21:42.790981Z
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@aral @Purism @scolobb @enkiv2 @clacke @strypey Two of the four freedom are the largely designed to enable people to hire someone/ask their friends to fix/change your softwares for you. Just like car repair/pluming or whatever people don't know/don't have time to do themselves. However, people don't know about free software, they only knows that there's this development model called "open source".
(DIR) Post #2057161 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2018-12-17T17:36:18Z
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@tleydxdy please don't bring the "free software" vs. "open source" holy war into this, it's irrelevant to the discussion. Besides, both camps are wrong, the correct term is #FreeCode ;-P@aral @Purism @scolobb @clacke @enkiv2
(DIR) Post #2057162 by tleydxdy@pl.smuglo.li
2018-12-17T17:53:23.876001Z
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@strypey @enkiv2 @clacke @scolobb @Purism @aral I'm not trying to wage any wars here, just that they are different. Free software is about people's freedom, and that includes paying someone to fix your stuff.
(DIR) Post #2057181 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2018-12-17T17:39:45Z
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@tleydxdy most people can't afford to pay someone to swap out engine on their car, or the OS on their computer. So the two best ways to get more people using a #FreeCode OS, a) find ways to make replacing an OS as easy as replacing apps, or b) as @abundance ral@mastodon.ar.al says, sell computers with GNU/Linux as the default OS. There are a lot of companies doing this now, but very few of them meet #RespectsYourFreedom standards:http://linuxpreloaded.com/@Purism @scolobb @aral @clacke @enkiv2
(DIR) Post #2057182 by tleydxdy@pl.smuglo.li
2018-12-17T17:54:43.027870Z
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@strypey @enkiv2 @clacke @aral @scolobb @Purism this is where the car analogy breaks down. Everyone need to pay to swap their car engine. but with free software, it only takes one guy to make the change, and another(possibly the same guy) to share the code.
(DIR) Post #2057348 by tleydxdy@pl.smuglo.li
2018-12-17T18:04:08.712376Z
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@strypey @enkiv2 @clacke @aral @scolobb @Purism On the other hand, hardware are a different issue, the current difficulties for hardware support, is that they are designed for non-free software, and the proprietary model. If not for GPL, Android would be just another completely non-free OS, like with PlayStation, not something that's only plagued with non-free blobs and hardware lockdowns. Free hardware companies are growing. We just need more time/support.
(DIR) Post #2074301 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-17T09:20:58Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@aral Amen to that. That's what I have been trying to preach out here for ages, too, not just talking about FOSS operating systems or applications but also about things such as decentralized or federated network services. Most people don't want just "bits" they can run themselves. They want services that just "work" (with different requirements how this "works" should look). A load of technically great #FLOSS solutions suffer from right that. 😐 @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2074302 by ente@chaos.social
2018-12-17T12:58:22Z
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@z428 @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism I think this has several reasons:1) FOSS is deeply rooted in the 70s/80s, when computers were this complicated.2) Many FOSS devs write software for themselves in their spare time ("works for me"). 3) Many FOSS projects are small and lack funds. People focus on getting the basic functionality going and then don't bother with making an UI that is nice and intuitive to use and dealing with supporting users(there are probably more reasons)
(DIR) Post #2074303 by Wolf480pl@niu.moe
2018-12-18T11:19:43Z
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@ente @z428 @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism re 1)IMO computers these days are way more complicated than in 70s/80sre 2)I think the whole idea behind FOSS is to empower people to fix themselves the bugs that they encounter, rather than rely on others to do it for them.It used to be that you had to hire a specialist to write a letter for you. Now you can write it on your own, because everyone can write.Can't we have the same with software?
(DIR) Post #2074390 by clacke@libranet.de
2018-12-18T11:29:25Z
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@Wolf480pl @ente @z428 @aral @strypey @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism The vision of having every computer user or most computer users upgraded to programmers and creators has turned out a harder nut to crack than many of us thought back in the 80s.Of course it doesn't help that mass-produced devices have been forces in the exact opposite direction, because their manufacturers had other problems they wanted to solve.
(DIR) Post #2074396 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T11:29:56Z
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@Wolf480pl Personally, I think (2) is something that doesn't work as user count increases. That letter example is good but slightly off in my experience. Other way 'round: Do people fix their TVs, cars, motorcycles themselves? How much of work or knowledge does a majority of people invest in making meals (as opposed to, say, getting bread from your local bakery and anything else from your local grocery store)? Not even talking about ... @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2074427 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T11:31:25Z
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@Wolf480pl ... self-driving cars or services such as Uber (as opposed to driving yourself). Actually, I think this is something that even could be *good* for #FLOSS software - if people just got away from the expectation to teach end-users how to do things on their own (rather than provide them with a service to quickly and professionally fix whichever requirement or issue they might have). Just like that letter example, again: Friend ...@ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2074450 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T11:33:07Z
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@Wolf480pl ... of mine's a tech freelancer, and he pays a few hours each month to a "freelance secretary" who keeps track of doing all the paperwork, writing, bookkeeping for him. Perpetually, so he doesn't have to deal with this on his own (even if he possibly could - but it would be far less efficient). Same about software: Teaching Jane Doe to, in example, fix that nasty memory leak in #GNOME Shell will be likely to not be effective. 😉 @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2074531 by Wolf480pl@niu.moe
2018-12-18T11:39:08Z
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@z428 @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism >I think this is something that even could be *good* for #FLOSS softwareI think this would put us in the same place MS and Apple are: treating users like idiots, and telling them what decisions to make, or even preventing them from making wrong decisions.That's not freedom.Freedom is the ability to make your decisions, and this necessarily includes the ability to make wrong decisions, and experience their effects.
(DIR) Post #2074646 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T11:48:34Z
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@Wolf480pl Objection, your honour. 😉 I don't think this is necessarily about treating users as "idiots" or restricting their freedom. Isn't it, much more, about accepting that in days of specialization and all, people who might be "idiots" in some fields are total experts in others? Not everyone has the skills or understanding it takes to, in example, install an operating system on an arbitrary piece of hardware. Just like I totally ... @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2074672 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T11:50:19Z
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@Wolf480pl ... would fail to even replace brake kits in my car (something my car-fixing school mates still consider a trivial work everyone just should do at home whenever necessary). In a vast majority of day-to-day life cases, right now, we *have* to rely upon specialists as we are by no means qualified to make meaningful decisions on our own, and likewise we won't be able to learn what it takes to do so in a realistic amount of time.@ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2074710 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T11:51:57Z
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@Wolf480pl (Plus: In some cases, you don't want to make either "good" or "wrong" decisions but want to get rid of even having to make decisions altogether because preparing and making the decision takes you an immense amount of time while not providing obvious benefits. That's why I use GNU/Linux rather than making use of the freedom to completely implement my own operating system and eventually fail ... 😉 )@ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2074813 by Wolf480pl@niu.moe
2018-12-18T11:57:25Z
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@z428 @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism What I mean by "treating users as idiots" is intentionally making it hard for them to chose non-default options.I agree that users should be free not to make a decision, and that's what sane defaults are for.But that doesn't justify that some settings are impossible to change, or take "settings > show more options > advanced > yeah I know what I'm doing > option B (unrecommended) > yeah I'm sure > yes > yes I'm sure" to change.
(DIR) Post #2074862 by Wolf480pl@niu.moe
2018-12-18T11:59:56Z
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@z428 @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism It'd be good if we could find a middle ground, where the UI is easy to grasp for new users, but doesn't discourage them from tweaking things and learning more.But it's hard for me to come up with examples of UI which satisfies this requirement, possibly because there aren't many. And most projects tend to overshoot one way or the other.
(DIR) Post #2074899 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T12:01:38Z
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@Wolf480pl I agree, but that's a difficult line to draw. Perfect examples for me are (#Linux desktop) #GNOME vs. #KDE and (web tools) #taiga.io vs. #jira: On one side, there are very well-designed and -crafted tools with a clear idea what their users look like, very much tailored towards fulfilling their use case. Consequently, in such situations people *should* keep the defaults because the defaults are there and crafted the way they ... @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2074900 by Wolf480pl@niu.moe
2018-12-18T12:01:46Z
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@z428 @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism But can you replace a wheel when you get a flat tire?Or check oil level and add more if necessary?
(DIR) Post #2074939 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T12:02:54Z
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@Wolf480pl ... are for a good reason. The other side (#KDE, #jira) essentially are like: We provide you with a tool that can look and feel just *exactly* how you want it. There are no "real" defaults. Consequently, however, the user has a load more work to do both reconsidering the actual requirements and getting them implemented in technology. The longer I work in this field, the more I get the impression that ... @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2074979 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T12:04:08Z
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@Wolf480pl ... the actual work is not implementing good software but being *very* close to your users and very sensitive to their requirements so you can come up with software that might allow for configuration or modification at some point but in which the end user might not even need that anymore because the solution just fits like a glove. @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2074996 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T12:04:58Z
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@Wolf480pl Check oil level - yes. Replace a wheel - yes, but this already is something which I *would* be capable of doing and yet possibly avoid having to do it on my own if somehow possible... 😉 @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2075025 by Wolf480pl@niu.moe
2018-12-18T12:05:42Z
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@z428 @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism Judging by the way you described GNOME and Taiga, they're not tools. They're appliances.They're not like a knife. More like a bread cutter machine.
(DIR) Post #2075204 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T12:13:27Z
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@Wolf480pl Interesting point of view... Maybe that's actually true and important: There are people who build their own home media and file server on top of #samba and #CIFS, and there are people who buy a local NAS appliance. Likewise, there's a target group that builds custom PCs and installs a custom operating system, and there's a group buying iPads or Android tablets and *expecting* these things to just do their job, without ... @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2075212 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T12:14:30Z
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@Wolf480pl ... bothering much even about the fact that there's a difference between "hardware" and "software". Traditionally, #FLOSS community seems extremely strong for people who want the knife and way less strong for people who want or need the "appliance"...? Does that make some sense, or am I completely off here?@ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2075556 by Wolf480pl@niu.moe
2018-12-18T12:36:56Z
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@z428 @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism Yes, this makes a lot of sense.Also, most people who build their own PCs whom I know would also replace a broken tap on their own, rather than calling a plumber.I think traditionally, FOSS caters more to DIY people for two reasons:1. The DIY people benefit way more (and more directly) from having the source code available than "just-works" people.2. The DIY people are capable of, and willing to, contribute in their free time.
(DIR) Post #2075642 by Wolf480pl@niu.moe
2018-12-18T12:43:42Z
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@z428 @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism I'm reasonably sure these two assumptions are central to how the FOSS ecosystem functions. It makes me think that making FOSS applications tailored for non-tinkerers' needs would require a different (not better!) development model and set of incentives, one that may turn out to be unsuitable for tinkerers.And making it work in practice may be comparably difficult to making communism work in practice.
(DIR) Post #2075912 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T12:58:19Z
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@Wolf480pl That's exactly where I am not sure.... In the 1990s I spent quite a bit time in my life using SuSE Linux distributions. Essentially they did something like this: Build a very well-crafted, well-configured, documented, end-user-focussed "operating system" box (back in a time when even Windows 9x was still sold in boxes). That's what, in the late 2010s, I see teams and entities such as #System76 and #elementaryos doing ... @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2075944 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T12:59:49Z
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@Wolf480pl ... in an up-to-date way. However, I also see a limit there in cost, effort and maybe value: It's not a "free lunch". Either you get the "for-tinkerers" ecosystem (which will provide you with all you need but require you to actually tweak and adjust it to your needs), or you might get a version someone "streamlined" for you - but in this case, eventually, there's a price tag to it, and you can make a decision whether it's ... @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2075962 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T13:00:35Z
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@Wolf480pl ... more effective / sustainable / smart to pay a certain amount of money or jump in, learn and do all the work on your own. If we managed to offer both ways in a meaningful way, some #FLOSS projects definitely could benefit from that.@ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2076001 by Wolf480pl@niu.moe
2018-12-18T13:02:34Z
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@z428 @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism Looks like SuSE was a business from the very beginning.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUSE_Linux#HistoryIIRC Stallman's initial idea was that people or groups of people would pay programmers to tailor Free Software to their needs.Things like SuSE show that it's possible, but these days for-profit IT companies (and even some non-profits like Mozilla) went down a pathological way of manipulating their users, and IMO can't be relied on.
(DIR) Post #2076099 by Wolf480pl@niu.moe
2018-12-18T13:06:15Z
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@z428 @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism I think one of the problems is how users feel entitled to their "free lunch".That's what they seemingly get from Google et al. and they also expect to get the same from FOSS projects. This ends bad for both the users and the FOSS projects, and only data-hungry corpos - or, let's put it clear: scammers - benefit.
(DIR) Post #2076166 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T13:11:34Z
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@Wolf480pl Yes, that might have been Stallmans initial idea, but then again, making clothings for ages also was about tailors making, well, mostly clothings individual tailored towards certain customers - which is a business model that went away all along with larger-scale manufacturing and "industry 1.0". In the current age, people pretty well seem to have adopted the approach "for-profit" media has been taking ... @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2076214 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T13:13:39Z
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@Wolf480pl ... for quite a while now - funding "content" by selling advertisements and thus keeping the end-users from having to pay for it with money (instead they do with their attention or data or whatever comes to mind). That's a big problem mostly because of how this grew entirely out of control with all the tracking, data mining and analytics on top of it. But it's pretty difficult to get rid of that again. Considerably worse, ... @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2076249 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T13:15:21Z
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@Wolf480pl ... ironically, is that large corporations live off #FLOSS (and thus to quite some degree work done by unpaid idealists and volunteers) and, this way, are able to provide their services with very limited up-front costs. Just imagining Google, Facebook or Twitter would have been forced to start over with fully licensed MS Windows NT servers, databases and development tools. Instead they built upon "Software Libre" and made ... @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2076258 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T13:15:52Z
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@Wolf480pl ... "Software Gratis" that is (at times) useful but very bad to your privacy - and *hard* to compete with. 😐 @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2078341 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-17T13:06:23Z
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@ente Fully agree. To me, it always and again boils down to needing more "sustainable" approaches to building and maintaining #FLOSS than "just volunteer work". 😉 @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2078342 by ente@chaos.social
2018-12-17T13:08:29Z
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@z428 So how do we tap into that sweet EU cash money?@aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2078343 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2018-12-17T17:50:40Z
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@ente a few people have started to study the problem of funding the commons in details. #Snowdrift #Coop is one of them:https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/history/software@z428 @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2078344 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-18T14:17:13Z
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@strypey @ente @z428 @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism What I find funny (sad) of this is that it start talking about the #freedom of #FreeSoftware, then explain #OSS as a #brand from #business-oriented technologists, then say #FLOSS / #FOSS is above the parts, then collapse it to #FLO, just to talk for the rest of the text about... #money.WTF?Money!Money?Money!#Curiosity?No, Money! Just Money!#Hacking? #Gift?Not sustainable. Money!Fast fix:#sed 's/FL\?O\(SS\)\?/OSS/g'
(DIR) Post #2078345 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-18T14:24:18Z
2 likes, 1 repeats
@clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente Seconded. Funding FOSS development directly risks turning it into a de-facto business, with donating parties de-facto customers (as has happened with Mozilla). Ensure developers' basic needs are met & then let them work on whatever they feel needs work, and the result will be less business-oriented (and thus, more user-oriented) software.
(DIR) Post #2078438 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2018-12-17T06:59:54Z
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@enkiv2 why do you mean by "a jake" here? I hadn't come across this term, and I'm finding a vast range of contradictory definitions:https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Jake@clacke @scolobb
(DIR) Post #2078439 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-17T12:14:10Z
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@strypey A 'jake' is a kind of prank where somebody's (usually physical) mailbox is flooded with discordian propaganda material. Typically, it's a response to them being perceived as uptight.@clacke @scolobb
(DIR) Post #2078440 by miya@letsalllovela.in
2018-12-18T14:58:39.737424Z
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@enkiv2 is there a collection of that propaganda material online
(DIR) Post #2078630 by miya@letsalllovela.in
2018-12-18T15:06:25.144600Z
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@strypey “homebrew PC”
(DIR) Post #2080865 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2018-12-18T17:08:23Z
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@Wolf480pl > It makes me think that making FOSS applications tailored for non-tinkerers' needs would require a different (not better!) development model and set of incentives, one that may turn out to be unsuitable for tinkerers.Congratulations! You just invented open source! ;-P@z428 @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2080884 by Wolf480pl@niu.moe
2018-12-18T17:09:27Z
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@strypey @z428 @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism Nope, Open Source uses the same model, but now the self-interested tinkerers are whole businesses instead of individual hackers.
(DIR) Post #2080922 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2018-12-18T17:11:52Z
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@Wolf480pl #ChrisAnderson of #Wired wrote a whole book about this challenge, called 'Free: The Future of a Radical Price'. I don't agree with all his assumptions and conclusions, but it's a worthy exploration of the issues involved, and why some of the proposed ways of competing with gratis "services" (#datafarms) haven't worked.@z428 @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2081640 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2018-12-18T17:24:35Z
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@tleydxdy If you don't know how to install a new OS (like I currently don't with my #Android), you either have to pay someone else to do it, or put in the hours of research and tinkering to learn how to #DIY. Just like swapping out a car engine. You're talking about making customizations to code, which is a different situation. You're probably right that there's nothing in the car and engine analogy that matches, unless you're driving a #WikiSpeed car?@Purism @scolobb @aral @clacke @enkiv2
(DIR) Post #2081641 by tleydxdy@pl.smuglo.li
2018-12-18T18:02:57.272361Z
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@strypey talk to a friend, I've installed plenty of systems for my friends.
(DIR) Post #2081694 by alcinnz@floss.social
2018-12-18T18:08:15Z
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@enkiv2 @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente I think the math is very simple here. Free software needs to be funded by those who use that particular piece. And people should be able to pay for new features to be developed, as that's usually a neverending task.This does require a shift in cultural expectations, but elementary's been doing some superb work here even if it hasn't gone far enough yet.
(DIR) Post #2081829 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-18T18:15:17Z
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@clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente That just makes free software into a business. It's very important that core developers avoid a relationship with the most powerful users in which their decisions can be swayed, because the most powerful users are never representative of the users that need the benefits of free software the most. Making it transactional means whoever can pay the most has power over the direction of development.
(DIR) Post #2082419 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-18T11:00:40Z
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@strypey @ente @z428 @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism "the overtly political rhetoric of software #freedom"🤦♂️
(DIR) Post #2082730 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-18T18:19:25Z
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@clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente Developers, like everybody else, need to be able to afford to eat. If being able to eat is contingent upon pleasing an already-powerful third party, that adds to the third party's power -- and this is strictly worse for the developer than a proprietary situation, where they get a slice of the returns on that power instead of single-time incentives; meanwhile, the disempowered get software they can't use.
(DIR) Post #2082731 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-18T18:22:00Z
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@clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente On the other hand, if we avoid business engagements and transactionality altogether, both developers & end users are empowered, while businesses get the dregs. This is contingent upon developers being able to eat regardless of what they do or don't do -- i.e., either tenure, a generous sandbox, or basic income.
(DIR) Post #2082732 by alcinnz@floss.social
2018-12-18T18:52:25Z
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@enkiv2 @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente Yes like any business you'd need to make sure the money doesn't come with strings attached that'll harm your efforts.At the same time I want to show that libre software can be profitable enough to live on. Because there is an exchange of value that should be recognized as such.And this necessarily involves changing the perception of libre software, I think for the better.
(DIR) Post #2082811 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T18:57:39Z
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@alcinnz Yes. That's my very point. Especially in terms of making sure money poured into the system doesn't violate or break the desired ethics of "libre software".@enkiv2 @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2082852 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-18T19:00:03Z
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@clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente Business itself *is* the strings. The whole point of a market is that the customer exerts power over the provider through the right to deny future purchase -- it's nothing *but* strings. We need to prevent free software from becoming business-oriented in this way, because what businesses want is not what people want, and B2B pays much more than end users (particularly non-technical end users) ever can.
(DIR) Post #2082872 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T19:01:01Z
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@alcinnz Yes, despite initial glitches, I do have quite some hopes for the #elementaryos approach here. Not sure whether it will work out, but at least they try. Few actually do. @enkiv2 @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2082890 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T19:00:11Z
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@enkiv2 Big fat "YES" to the idea of a basic income, first and foremost. But still, I wonder whether (all other aspects aside) we also would need more ideas of sustainability in the #FLOSS community. All these things such as: Don't waste resources (no matter whether energy, hardware or manpower). Focus on code for long-term use, reduce the amount of "stuff" (code, standards, data) do be thrown away. And so on. 🙂 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2082935 by alcinnz@floss.social
2018-12-18T19:04:07Z
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@enkiv2 @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente And running a business is all about saying yes to the strings you want and no to the strings you don't want.
(DIR) Post #2083005 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-18T19:02:31Z
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@clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente Allowing profitability concerns (even indirect ones) to dictate how free software gets written is how you get the Apache Foundation, or the current sorry state of Mozilla, or the deeply Google-entangled state of Chromium, or the incoherent standardization hell of the W3C. Businesses should be kept as far away from software as possible -- or at least relegated to THEIR software, where we don't need to care about it.
(DIR) Post #2083006 by alcinnz@floss.social
2018-12-18T19:08:15Z
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@enkiv2 @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente To some extent everyone has profitability concerns, whether you think that should be the case or not. I'm not decided.But yes, we should always be looking to a higher ideal than money. And software freedom's a fine one.
(DIR) Post #2083088 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T19:11:28Z
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@alcinnz Yes. Fully agree. But even the GNU Manifesto and RMS state that there's no requirement for SoftwareLibre to be free-of-charge. Actually the FSF itself earlier used to ship (extremely expensive) tape reels with GNU software on it, back in the pre-internet age. That's where I am close to all those saying business is not generally a *bad* thing, even profitable business isn't, as long as doesn't ditch all of its values.@enkiv2 @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2083159 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-18T19:14:15Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
@clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente The most desirable behaviors are the ones that will never be profitable to implement, because they take some existing market & completely obviate it, collapsing the justifications for existing structures of rent-seeking. For instance, drastically lowering the barriers to software modification by non-technical users is absolutely possible & absolutely desirable but demolishes about half of software engineering.
(DIR) Post #2083280 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T19:15:15Z
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@enkiv2 There is that saying of "if you're not the customer, you're the product". I agree with that. If a business creates a good SoftwareLibre product to customers who want right that (and want to pay for that), seems like a win/win to me. Problem, right now, is that a majority apparently only has "gratis" as predominant value, and businesses don't hesitate doing so. Customers "just"(?) need to focus on different values?@clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2083297 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-18T19:17:01Z
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@clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente Obviating a market & replacing it with nothing is a good thing for the end users -- they get a better experience with less effort and less investment of all types. Not so good for the currently-empowered structure of programmers & managers, who have grown used to our status and compensation being inflated by unnecessary obscurantism.
(DIR) Post #2083298 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T19:23:15Z
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@enkiv2 ... yet waste their time tampering with software, this seems an awful waste of precious resources and skills on something an "expert" could have done in a way shorter period of time and (arguably) at better quality. @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2083503 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-18T19:30:06Z
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@clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente A lot of software engineer is experts-in-name-only doing things poorly when the same small amount of programming knowledge could be transfered to the domain expert in less time than the programmer took to expensively munge the domain knowledge. Fixing the most obvious low-hanging-fruit incidental-complexity bullshit in language & tooling design gets rid of this semi-competent scribal class of "professional" programmers.
(DIR) Post #2083504 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-18T19:31:01Z
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@clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente And, it replaces it with a non-professional class of non-programmers who program better than the low end of the professional class of programmers (and have an edge in knowing their own problems).
(DIR) Post #2083505 by alcinnz@floss.social
2018-12-18T19:35:53Z
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@enkiv2 @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente I don't think we'll ever entirely get rid of the specialization that is software engineering. But I do think the field has been made too mystical, and there's a large range of software that can and should be replaced with something a little generic without any loss of convenience.
(DIR) Post #2083520 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T19:33:04Z
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@enkiv2 Hmmm. No. Software development isn't mostly about programming. It's about watching, asking the right questions and trying to model abstractions that describe a domain well enough to make for a meaningful implementation. While I agree wholeheartedly with the status quo of some "software development experts" (actually we have *way too many* programmers and way too few actual *software engineers* in #FLOSS to date), ...@clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2083530 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-18T19:32:47Z
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@enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente Lowering barriers does not only mean to simplify software (and you know I'm writing #Jehanne to this aim) but also to educate people, to teach them how to modify it.We need to #hack both ends, and this distance is going to be an asymptotic function towards zero that will move software engineering forward.
(DIR) Post #2083531 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-18T19:35:42Z
1 likes, 2 repeats
@clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente That's exactly it. Bad tooling creates an artificial gap between programmer and non-programmer. Folks naturally want to wander into that space, so if you create good tooling that acts as a bridge, you'll get people on the bridge -- and some of them will slowly wander across, becoming professional-grade programmers by accident. This happens with any tooling that's both accessible & powerful.
(DIR) Post #2083631 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-18T19:42:11Z
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@clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente Genuine software engineers exist. There are few enough of them that only a tiny fraction of actual code is written by them. In the same way, there are actual doctors, but not everyone who owns a first aid kit & knows how to tie a splint gets to call themselves a doctor (even though first aid is much more common).
(DIR) Post #2083815 by pootz@mastodon.technology
2018-12-18T19:39:38Z
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@z428That's because RMS isn't connecting the profit motive and exploitation. He predicted software as a service but only sees it as a moral choice and not economicly necessary to outcompete others.Profits trumps morals when it's one or the other. Otherwise you go broke.@alcinnz @enkiv2 @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2083816 by alcinnz@floss.social
2018-12-18T19:51:56Z
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@pootz @z428 @enkiv2 @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente Yet on the otherhand morals can be a differentiator that gives people a reason to pay you over the other guy.But then again if you're large enough...
(DIR) Post #2083823 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-18T19:44:26Z
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@z428 @enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente Actually, according to Bruce Perens, I'm just a #programmer. A #humble programmer, as #Dijkstra would say... ;-)https://mobile.twitter.com/BrucePerens/status/1035654154939641856
(DIR) Post #2083824 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-18T19:50:59Z
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@z428 @enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente (People used to distinguish #coders from #programmers when programs were boring to encode on a punched tape... Software engineering is somewhat an oxymoron, as we are more #philosophers or #mathematicians than #engineers.But this discourse is long... and I don’t have the hours it needs... sorry.
(DIR) Post #2083864 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T19:54:24Z
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@alcinnz Yes. That's what I was about to add too. It's just, like, here (in Germany) right now an increasing amount of people again resorts to buying food that has been ecologically grown and "produced". It's way more expensive than what you get at your local supermarket but people still are ready and willing to pay for that. Which seems to show it generally *could* work... 🙂 @pootz @enkiv2 @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2083909 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-18T19:56:09Z
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@clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @pootz @z428 @Purism @aral @ente More concerning than morals (which we at least have language for discussing) is the subtle influence in terms of who-is-this-for & who-is-this-good-for. A morally-sound business is still a business, and has business-oriented needs and priorities that individuals do not have. And, any business is liable to be more powerful than any individual (modulo outliers like Bill Gates).
(DIR) Post #2084042 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T19:46:53Z
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@enkiv2 Fully agree. But claiming that "software engineering" still seems the wrong solution then. We need more and better software engineers both able to write good code (and be that to provide domain experts with really *sharp* tools) and to see, understand and model solutions for requirements. Other way round would be: "We don't need any more doctors because most of them aren't well enough trained anyway." 😉 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2084043 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-18T19:52:47Z
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@clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente Really, the medical equivalent of what I'm saying is "we don't need snake-oil salesmen, because the best they're capable of doing is first aid, & it's better to make first aid training available to everybody than to continue to enable snake-oil salesmen's primary gig of dangerous patent medicines by supporting their monopoly on first aid".
(DIR) Post #2084084 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T19:59:05Z
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@enkiv2 Sure. But it still depends. There's a difference, in example, whether you want to dominate the market - or just want to survive in your niche, whichever that is. If you know what your niche is and know you don't need any venture capital to get you and your small team to live off that for a reasonably long period of time - why not? It helps both your customers and your employees if you manage to do that ... @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @pootz @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2084091 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T20:01:23Z
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@enkiv2 ... right. You'll possibly be lost, though, if you either fall for pouring in external money - or for wanting to follow down the "we-need-to-grow" route of business. Problem might be: Trying both could make your business way easier - just try to follow that growth route to be "to big to fail" one day or defeat your competitors by size. It won't always work, and I'm unsure whether it's always really necessary.@clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @pootz @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2084538 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-18T20:24:36Z
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@enkiv2 @clacke @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente No @alcinnz, I'd love if it was so.Maybe there are rare ethical companies that do this. But MOST of companies NEVER say No to money whatever string is attached, not even if such string have an high probability of causing bankrupt.Really.I say No to customers.All my employers hate this.
(DIR) Post #2084726 by pootz@mastodon.technology
2018-12-18T20:33:19Z
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@alcinnzDoesn't matter if someone would prefer to pay you if your model isn't profitable, which is why all the old social media has become exponentially more invasive at the demands of investors seeking profit.Mastodon isn't immune from $ probs either, but depends less on profit@z428 @enkiv2 @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2084903 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-18T19:33:26Z
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@clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente You'd get a lot of non-professionals making the coding equivalent of geocities pages, but, y'know what? Graduates from 4 year degree programs in CS write awful code too. At least no hairball written by a non-professional will ever be as ugly and dysfunctional as your average monolithic 'enterprise' java codebase.
(DIR) Post #2084904 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T19:41:19Z
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@enkiv2 ... day 1, such as discovery, certain quality of service aspects and the like). Writing code is difficult, but it's trivial compared to, in example, building (larger) systems that work well, scale well, are stable and reliable and secure and whatever nonfunctional requirement you could come up with. *That's* what makes things nasty. Programming, compared to that, is rather simple.@clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2084905 by Wolf480pl@niu.moe
2018-12-18T20:40:49Z
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@z428 @enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente For every programmer designing a protocol or a framework, there are multiple (10? 100?) programmers doing mundane tasks all day.
(DIR) Post #2084964 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T20:44:32Z
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@Wolf480pl Word. And, from where I stand, this is *way* worse than domain experts not writing code. Instead of trying to get domain experts to code, why don't we try making software program generation more effective first? We very well had approaches here. Model driven architecture. Code generators. Domain specific language tooling. That kind of stuff.@enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2085217 by Wolf480pl@niu.moe
2018-12-18T20:56:40Z
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@enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente Maybe we should redefine the problem:It's not about finding a way to pay the developers - those who send patches.It's about finding a way to pay the maintainers - those who decide which patches should be merged.
(DIR) Post #2085220 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-18T20:42:09Z
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@pootz @alcinnz @z428 @enkiv2 @clacke @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente Guys, I'm arguing that #FreeSoftware doesn't necessarily need a #BusinessModel.It can have one, but doesn't need one: all this fuss about #FLOSS sustainability is an evidence of the fact that #FOSS just mean #OSS. #Hacking just for #fun is what created #Linux. What created the #Web.
(DIR) Post #2085227 by pootz@mastodon.technology
2018-12-18T20:37:17Z
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@z428Except eventually you will more than likely see others encroach on your niche if it's profitable enough in which case the forces of the market drag you into competition whether you want it or not. Either you "adapt" or go under and get bought out to be retooled.@enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2085228 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T20:42:14Z
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@pootz Yes, of course this threat's always there, and I don't claim this approach always works. But it depends upon some circumstances in my opinion: How big is your niche? How much effort does it take to crawl into there? How much money to be made in there? If you're reasonably small and have no ambitions to grow, that niche might be more interesting than to a multi-million-dollar company looking to grow by the next 100%. @enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2085244 by pootz@mastodon.technology
2018-12-18T20:47:11Z
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@z428And I'm saying it's dynamic and always in motion. One day you can build that niche but tomorrow things will be different and integrated into an exploitative product.Look at linux on android. Had all the potential to liberate the phone space but instead it mines your data@enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2085249 by pootz@mastodon.technology
2018-12-18T20:50:53Z
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@z428 @enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @entePolitics matter when we're talking about people's control over the digital world and the market is not a tool we can use to tackle thatWe can make some badass stuff in the meantime but it will be largely out of the public's reach if it remains a niche for tech enthusiasts
(DIR) Post #2085264 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T20:52:14Z
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@pootz Fully agree, yes, but that's an entirely different thing I guess: Being content with earning a living in a niche is one part of it. The other part is being pretty close to your customers, listen and try to envision what they might need. This, of course, needs to happen, but this is also something where a small niche provider often can do better than a large corporate behemoth (for the niche again of course).@enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2085276 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T20:55:41Z
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@pootz Well....... the market *could* be a tool. But only if customers demanded a change immediately - and started putting money where their mouths are. Which isn't happening right now, and unless there's a critical mass of customers to make a difference, the market won't change this. We need to be into politics for changing that - which then again always is a good idea to be, for a load of reasons. 😉 @enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2085369 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T21:02:30Z
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@Wolf480pl Well at the very least, I think whichever payment model applied generally should make carefully maintaining, refining, steering large software projects into the right direction an attractive thing, rather than starting over all anew with new projects too often. Thin and difficult line here, though.@enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2085389 by pootz@mastodon.technology
2018-12-18T21:01:06Z
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@z428Consumers don't have the power to shape the market without organizing producers. You can't opt out of many products, phones included.Tech workers need to be organized so free software is the DEFAULT not just an alt. That's a power not available to a small company/buyer.@enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2085399 by pootz@mastodon.technology
2018-12-18T21:03:10Z
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@z428 @enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @enteI.e: it's up to tech workers to create that leverage because it's easy for a market dominated by Google and Apple to keep Ubuntu phone, etc out with developer exclusivity incentives, support and deals.Small companies don't have those resources.
(DIR) Post #2085410 by Wolf480pl@niu.moe
2018-12-18T21:04:26Z
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@z428 @enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente IMO it shouldn't discourage starting new projects (there should be low barrier to experimentation), but it should provide incentives against abandoning old software that is good enough at its job.
(DIR) Post #2085447 by alcinnz@floss.social
2018-12-18T21:06:58Z
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@pootz @z428 @enkiv2 @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente I agree with Cory Doctorow on this: We need strong anti-trust enforcement again. For decades now the laws have been interpreted too strictly.
(DIR) Post #2085461 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T21:06:11Z
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@pootz ... or (de)motivated enough to change. What if all global phone users started demanding Sailfish devices all of a sudden? Customers *could* change that because most of the time there are options. But convincing customers is ... difficult. @enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2085496 by pootz@mastodon.technology
2018-12-18T21:05:01Z
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@z428 @enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @enteIt also solves the problem of "what is default" if your phone comes prepackaged with freedom respecting software. Most people don't have the expertise to install FOSS, so it needs to be installed by those putting together the phones, I.e: tech workers.
(DIR) Post #2085497 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T21:08:31Z
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@pootz Of course. That definitely would help, and I'm not at all arguing against that. I'm just throwing into consideration that even a "business" approach leaves chances to in some way sort some of these things - if done right. It's just utterly difficult. @enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2085701 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T21:04:11Z
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@pootz I'm torn about that... in some way you're possibly right. And yet: I *very well* remember building web applications years earlier and cursing and shouting at MSIE6, the browser made in hell that lasted way too long. *But*: Back then, virtually everybody was, like, "optimizing for MSIE is fine because it will never go away". What happened is a mix of (of course) a good product and consumers willing ... @enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2085702 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-18T21:16:14Z
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@z428 @pootz @enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente Good #marketing.Astonishing good #technology (at a first glance).Maybe even a good product, if market share is everything for something apparently free.But an evil software.#Chrome (and #Firefox) is a marketing tool of #Google: not only to defeat #IE but for milking users' data.
(DIR) Post #2085703 by alcinnz@floss.social
2018-12-18T21:20:03Z
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@Shamar @z428 @pootz @enkiv2 @clacke @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente I can clearly understand Mozilla's actions, though I certainly don't agree with everything they do. Any problems with Mozilla seems to be deeper then just them.I think when it comes down to it, the problem with the Web is that they don't know who it serves.
(DIR) Post #2085742 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-18T21:23:04Z
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@Wolf480pl @z428 @enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente What is good enough?http://jehanne.io/2018/11/15/simplicity-awakes.htmlAlso note that existing knowledge base (and thus hiring pool) is already a great force against innovation!
(DIR) Post #2086623 by pootz@mastodon.technology
2018-12-18T21:57:23Z
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@z428Because google has the same clout that MS did when it was the desktop king. They cornered the mobile market because MS got comfy in their niche.That's the reason chrome is the new default.@enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2087220 by pootz@mastodon.technology
2018-12-18T22:18:45Z
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@z428Without organizing workers to make that a reality people can scream for what they want all day long but it doesn't matter because they don't have that power. They don't make the phones. Workers do.They're going to buy one anyway because they need one for this society.@enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2087298 by pootz@mastodon.technology
2018-12-18T22:20:48Z
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@z428 @enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @enteThe best part about organizing workers is that you don't need to convince consumers at all either and you completely bypass that problem, which is way easier by comparison. But I'm sure they'd support tech workers to make less invasive phones if that was well communicated.
(DIR) Post #2087479 by pootz@mastodon.technology
2018-12-18T22:28:23Z
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@alcinnzI think anti-trust fights a symptom built into capitalism without addressing the cause. It resets the game but not the board.The main problem is we have no democratic oversight of this tech or production that can keep it from being abusive and voice public concern.@z428 @enkiv2 @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2089555 by snowdrift@social.coop
2018-12-18T23:14:49Z
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@enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente Our crowdmatching system at Snowdrift.coop spreads the burden as wide as possible by design.We recognize the problem with uneven influence. We want funding that isn't tied to a few wealth philanthropists (philanthropy is, by nature, an exercise of power).
(DIR) Post #2089984 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T20:58:07Z
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@pootz Android as Linux on phone is interesting by the way. Yes, could have liberated mobile devices - but instead helped Google essentially smashing the whole market for any alternative smartphone operating systems so there's no serious competition now (except for Apple). 😐 @enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2089985 by ente@chaos.social
2018-12-18T23:57:55Z
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@z428 @pootz @enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral Linux on mobile devices is interesting in itself, because I think most of the older generation of FOSS devs don't even consider mobile devices computers (I know I sure didn't for a long time). It doesn't have a keyboard and you can't code on it. This means they were never the focus of the community at a time when it would have mattered, and now Google and Apple dominate this market.
(DIR) Post #2090002 by alcinnz@floss.social
2018-12-18T23:59:15Z
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@ente @z428 @pootz @enkiv2 @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral I can't agree enough!And I can't wait to get my hands on a Librem 5!
(DIR) Post #2091368 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T14:24:07Z
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@Shamar ... in their spare time. That feels wrong and difficult on way too many levels and in pretty different ways. 😉 @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2091369 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-18T14:26:07Z
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@z428 @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism It's the price of my #freedom to develop #Jehanne for the next generation of #hackers.
(DIR) Post #2091370 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-18T14:38:05Z
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@strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism To be clear, @z428, I agree that it's a legit way to earn a living.It can also produce very good software.But if the point of #FreeSoftware is not the price, but the #freedom, we cannot trade such freedom for money or market shares.The most important freedom is the freedom to #hack, to study and modify the software.#Snowdrift "hope to address the problem of too many similar projects" in direct contrast with this freedom.
(DIR) Post #2091371 by snowdrift@social.coop
2018-12-18T23:17:04Z
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@Shamar @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism @z428 > "hope to address the problem of too many similar projects" in direct contrast with this freedom.Reduced fragmentation in practice ≠ reduced freedomForking is an *essential* freedom, but not an end goal in itself. It's a necessary check on the power of any single dominant project and a tool for creativity. But fragmentation isn't itself desirable.
(DIR) Post #2091372 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T00:18:18Z
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@snowdrift @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism @z428 Fragmentation of what?Nothing break, it's #software!Forking is desiderable as more forks mean more solutions explored, more lessons learned and more experiments verified.Reducing #FreeSoftware "fragmentation" is like reducing #sex: less #fun, less offsprings, less #knowledge and thus less #freedom.
(DIR) Post #2091505 by snowdrift@social.coop
2018-12-19T00:42:57Z
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@Shamar @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism @z428 Fragmentation of *effort*, wheel-reinvention, etc.If we have 10 projects that are all half-done and the same amount of resources (hours of work) could have made 1 or 2 really robust and complete projects, that's what fragmentation is.A better metaphor: Reducing free-software fragmentation is like having a few deep friendships instead of just dozens of friendly acquaintances.
(DIR) Post #2097532 by clacke@libranet.de
2018-12-19T05:54:04Z
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@Shamar "overt" does not have negative connotations. It's the opposite of "covert" and just means the terms "software freedom" and "free software" put the concept of freedom front and center, which is a political stance, whereas the term "open source" gives freedom a backseat position.
(DIR) Post #2097533 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-18T14:23:43Z
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@Shamar This approach, at least to me, seems perfectly legit for one particular reason: We always wanted "Software Libre", didn't we? We always considered "Software Libre", freedoms such as those proposed by the #GPL to be more important than just "free-beer". But we haven't yet found a way to really build software up to that ideals, except for people (some of them working for pretty non-free companies in their dayjobs) to do so ... @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2097550 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-18T14:27:09Z
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@enkiv2 @clacke @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente And it will be more innovative.
(DIR) Post #2097575 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-18T18:47:55Z
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@enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente True #software #freedom comes when it is quick and convenient to write it yourself.https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2018/12/msg00073.html
(DIR) Post #2098037 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T06:05:03Z
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@snowdrift @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism @z428 Reinventing the wheel is fundamental to #society if all wheel invented so far are triangular.What you see as #fragmentation of effort, I see as #redundancy, as distribution of #knowledge: it makes a society resilient to #censorship and open to innovation.I'm sure you are in good faith but you are victim...
(DIR) Post #2098038 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T06:11:00Z
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@snowdrift @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism @z428 ...of a cultural #hegemony.Even to fight for #freedom you feel compelled to fight first and foremost for #money, fo gain funds for "the cause". Such hegemony is so strong that you cannot see when you trade the cause today for the hope of money tomorrow.What if you got the problem backwards?2/
(DIR) Post #2098039 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T06:18:14Z
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@snowdrift @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism @z428 You cannot really solve a #problem you don't understand.What if the problem is #Capitalism?What if the problem is people thinking they need it? That they need to play that game? That they need to follow those rules?The best you could do is not to write code just for #freedom, but for #free too!3/
(DIR) Post #2099412 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T07:13:06Z
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@pootz Though I really like the idea, I think this hardly ever will work out. Because: Yes, workers make the phones. But it's a wholly different kind of beast to make quality pieces of hardware, eventually in large numbers, or "just" writing software: Supply chain. Manufacturing facilities. Safety measures. Resource consumption. Legal compliance. Wages for *way* more people involved in this process. For building ...@enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2099414 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T07:14:57Z
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@pootz ... "just" #SoftwareLibre, the tools you already have at hand will perfectly do. For making a piece of technology at end-user quality, it requires *drastically* more structures, more organization, more dealing with money at various points and in various quantities. Would this really even remotely be possible, assuming right now a load of the #FLOSS community fails to even have consensus in rather simple ...@enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2099420 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T07:16:07Z
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@pootz ... questions such as which protocols, programming languages, technologies to use, where you see a new #JavaScript web framework popping up every other week and people re-implement complex server applications simply because the "original" implementations were done in a programming language they didn't like? To build a piece of hardware will need *way* more determination and focus, and I very much question this ...@enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2099426 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T07:16:22Z
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@pootz ... is something "tech workers on their own" will be capable of doing.@enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2099457 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T07:01:52Z
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@Shamar Though I like your points of view, I firmly disagree here. I don't feel fighting for money first and foremost. But I first and foremost fight for making technology a *tool* to server people, rather than just something people deal with for the sake of technology. From that point of view, it's hard to argue #FLOSS is ages behind. It's "capitalism" and corporations that made tools nowadays empowering people. It's ...@snowdrift @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2099573 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T07:08:49Z
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@Shamar ... even stronger because we didn't do much to provide people with alternatives that work for *them*. It's about *them*. It should be about *them* - while most of your reasoning is about *us*. Most of your points of view make perfect sense from a technology guys point of view. But that's pretty much it. @snowdrift @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2099574 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T07:31:43Z
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@z428 @snowdrift @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism What you see as easy to use, good quality tools, I see as lock-in tools that reduce the expressiveness and freedom of people on many levels.Having good tools empowers.Needing good tools weakens.The solution is not to market good tools nobody need, but to create good tools that foster people #curiosity.
(DIR) Post #2099575 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T07:59:28Z
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@Shamar Have you ever considered doing such a discussion in example with musicians using Apple hardware and Steinberg software on these devices to do recording for their bands using these devices? You'll be pleasantly surprised of what you learn there. 😉 @snowdrift @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2099576 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T08:16:50Z
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@z428 @snowdrift @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism I will ask.But I know well how many graphics professionals and artists love #Apple tools.To be honest, I agree with #Stallman that using proprietary software is NOT a sin, something to be blamed or persecuted.The problem is that it waive freedom and is hardly a free choice.Given two identical softwares, with the same price and features would you chose the one who give you the right to hack it or the one who don't?
(DIR) Post #2099577 by clacke@libranet.de
2018-12-19T08:29:04Z
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> Given two identical softwares, with the same price and features would you chose the one who give you the right to hack it or the one who don't?@ShamarThat choice is as good as never the choice presented. That would be a non-brainer and free software would be a solved problem.What people like @snowdrift , tidelift.io/ , thinkpenguin.com/ , @Purism and others are trying to solve, is how to make that a choice that happens in reality more often.@z428 @strypey @ente @aral @enkiv2 @scolobb
(DIR) Post #2099666 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T08:22:13Z
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@Shamar *I* would choose the one I could hack. But I'm a techie. I write code both for fun and to earn a living. For me, software being "hackable" is a benefitMost people, being asked right this question, possibly would answer: "I don't care at all - I would choose the tool that works best for me, and if they are on par feature- and usability-wise, I'd choose the one which is less expensive." @snowdrift @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2100907 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T08:21:58Z
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@z428 @snowdrift @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism I want to empower people for real. So I want them to learn #CriticalThinking, #Logic, #Curiosity, #Collaboration and so on... and #FreeSoftware is a tool to this goal.I can't do much for people who don't know how to read of write and argue for the kindness of people writing and reading for them, or for the quality of their writings and so on... they prevent my help to reach them.
(DIR) Post #2100908 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T08:27:30Z
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@z428 @snowdrift @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism I want to empower people who want to be able to read and write for themselves.First because I'm curious to see such world, a world of #hackers that cannot be manipulated.I want my daughters to be free in such a #free world, and they cannot be free if I don't give them the tools.Such tools include more than #software, more than #FreeSoftware, that is not a goal for itself.And I know that this is not an easy goal....
(DIR) Post #2100909 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T08:39:08Z
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@z428 @snowdrift @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism ... so I cannot afford to add "profitability" or "sustainability" to the the variables maximized.#Technology is #Politics.Since wheels and sails.Even before the weapons of bronze age.We can accept this fact or not, but it doesn't affect the weight of our #responsibility.But if Technology is Politics, #hacking is a precondition, a requirement of #citizenship.I #hack more than an #OS.I'm hacking a #CyberDemocracy.
(DIR) Post #2100910 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T08:50:43Z
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@Shamar ... the end, *everything* #FLOSS did in this field here is pretty late to the game and has a hard time really making a stand against Android and iOS. It wasn't like this before. It's just a missed chance. And meanwhile, Apple and Google are doing "politics" while we mistake freedom to build yet another window manager with politics to build a better society. That's bitter. 😟 @snowdrift @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2100911 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T09:22:06Z
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@z428 @snowdrift @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism #FLOSS is just #OSS.F and L are there to nobilitate a #marketing tool while marginalizing the #hackers that write #FreeSoftware.Indeed you are talking about (totally legitimate) concerns that are in direct opposition with the concerns I'm talking about.The ONLY way #FreeSoftware #hackers can win #Freedom for people is to fight this marginalization of our values now, and to outnumber corporate developers in the #future.
(DIR) Post #2100912 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T09:37:54Z
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@Shamar ... they wanted (and needed) to make a living, pay bills and all that, and because they wanted to actually build software "for users" not just "for techies". Wonder how Android made it to be so incredibly widespread while the #GNU #Linux desktop has more or less been "vaporware" ever since the early 2000s? That's where we fall back to #sustainability - and maybe just in terms of "making sure developers ... @snowdrift @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2100914 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T09:39:37Z
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@Shamar ... can actually *afford* working on #FreeSoftware, fighting for #Freedom all day. You provided a set of very good view points but no real new answer or idea to solve that problem, which seems fundamental to #FLOSS if we don't want larger or smaller #FLOSS projects (#GNOME, #Firefox, #Linux kernel, ...) at the very end being at the mercy of the corporations the devs work for in their day-to-day life.@snowdrift @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2105430 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T10:00:23Z
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@z428 @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism #OSS is fine and useful to be developed as it is.All funding methods described in the @snowdrift's page are as good as they are effective (and I woudn't blame the approach they call "Rasom system"... and AFAIK even #Stallman wouldn't call that non-free or unethical).It's rational to care about "fragmentation" if you care about your market share, more than about what you can learn from a fork.But that's not #FS, just OSS.1/
(DIR) Post #2105431 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T10:11:47Z
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@z428 @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism @snowdrift Thus, if you think that #FLOSS actually includes #FreeSoftware, no solution that inhibit the #hackers' #curiosity for economical concerns can be accepted as a funding metho for FLOSS..If you don't care about the hackers' curiosity (which is TOTALLY fine), you shouldn't claim you want to support Free Software (which again is totally fine), because you confuse newcomers about what #FS is.Now.. how to support #Freedom?2/
(DIR) Post #2105432 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T10:31:01Z
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@z428 @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism @snowdrift There are many possible ways.#Education is probably the best way: earn a living by #teaching people how to #hack using your hacks.Education DOES NOT pose any tension between #freedom and earning a living.The better you do your work, the more free your students are to hack.Another way is to have an unrelated income (eg another job) and hack as a #gift.#TempleOS is a great example of #FreeSoftware, for example.
(DIR) Post #2105433 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T10:57:27Z
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@Shamar ... don't have that freedom. All your words are focussed solely on *our* freedom from *our* point of view. That's okay, but then we should accept we get our freedom for the price of leaving others (who could benefit from our work) essentially un-free.@strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism @snowdrift
(DIR) Post #2105434 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T11:24:59Z
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@z428 @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism @snowdrift No.Our #freedom it the freedom people need.Did you noticed how you keep talking about #users (using a software perspective), while I'm talking about #people (from a political freedom perspective)?1/
(DIR) Post #2105435 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T11:28:42Z
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@z428 @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism @snowdrift Please, read your words:> From that point of view, freedom for #hackers is nice but of little relevance to me. Hackers already do have or take all the freedom they want and need. It's end users [...] who don't have that freedom.You see that we are more #free than "users", but you have been indoctrinated to NOT think we should share such freedom.I want to give people (you'd say #users) the exact same #freedom we have.
(DIR) Post #2105436 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T11:34:00Z
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@Shamar ... amount of #freedom and autonomy we do have in our technology, but without having to go through the learning curve we had to master. *This* is where it gets interesting. And this is, what, repeatedly, I claim we totally fail at, because we don't even see this. That's just as if, say, a doctor asked a patient that he might very well have the #freedom to treat himself on his own - it's just about "a bit of learning".@strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism @snowdrift
(DIR) Post #2105437 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T12:01:45Z
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@z428 @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism @snowdrift If we were in Ancient Egypt you would be arguing that we can't ask peasants to learn how to read and write as it takes years or even decades to learn enough hieroglyphs.Meanwhile I would be working on an alphabet.That's where we are.That's what I want to #hack.
(DIR) Post #2105438 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T12:23:29Z
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@Shamar ... for Jane and John Doe to use a computer and technology *at least* as easy as they are able to do now (in the Apple/Google/Microsoft world) but having more freedoms while doing so. Will you be able to achieve that, following your approach? Otherwise, things we're doing will be a step back for those, trading something they can use for a freedom that doesn't provide them with any tangible benefits.@strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism @snowdrift
(DIR) Post #2105439 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-19T13:15:17Z
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@clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente There's a relatively obvious path forward for this 'alphabet': we take features that are extremely important for the kinds of interactive interfaces prefered by programmers (like the automatability & composability of unix command shells) and introduce them as built-in features in familiar-looking interfaces, in ways that are easy to casually stumble into & make sense of.
(DIR) Post #2105440 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-19T13:18:12Z
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@clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente Automatability doesn't require deep changes to the third-party ecosystem. Composability *does* -- adding it requires exposing the internals of "applications" so that they can be live-edited to call each others' internal functions at run time (which debug symbols & jit can help), but making it accessible means using a language that can be grasped by a non-programmer without training.
(DIR) Post #2105441 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-19T13:19:45Z
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@clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente (The obvious candidates for such a language -- smalltalk, io, forth, scheme -- are almost totally unknown as 'application' and 'system' languages.)
(DIR) Post #2105442 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T13:28:18Z
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@enkiv2 ... whether they already worked with this features, whether they would consider this idea in order to get work drastically eased, and (maybe, too) whether they would prefer a scripting / extensibility feature to hack the application on their own - or rather an application that works out of the box without such tweaks and adaptations.@clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2105443 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-19T13:42:52Z
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@clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente An application will never work out of the box, in the same way that "one size fits all" fits nobody. Either the application is modified directly, or the user does extra work outside of the application in order to make the problem fit the application.
(DIR) Post #2105444 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T13:52:18Z
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@enkiv2 ... pretty often it all feels very much like throwing very generic applications over the fence and letting end users assemble it to actually be useful to them. Just like I want a *car*, not a *roll-your-own-car-kit*. 😉 @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2105445 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-19T13:57:28Z
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@clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente This isn't a matter of giving the user a kit car. This is a matter of putting the wiring diagram in the user's manual so they can replace their headlights. While making these facilities available will require getting rid of all existing third-party apps & will obviate the lowest-effort third-party apps, it's hardly shoving the work of real engineers upon amateurs -- just moving it from amateurs-with-degrees to all amateurs.
(DIR) Post #2107496 by pootz@mastodon.technology
2018-12-19T15:05:26Z
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@z428In the immediate term I'm talking about something as simple as unions here. I didn't say "on their own" anyway, no section of workers does.https://theintercept.com/2018/12/17/google-china-censored-search-engine-2/That's the power workers have. Same with ending MAVEN@enkiv2 @clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2107874 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T13:49:12Z
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@enkiv2 Are we sure about that? Coming from a background where people used to spend ages on configuring #emacs, #vim or #mutt to the last possible option, I am more and more learning that "younger" folks around here don't want that anymore. They use, in example, #vscode as an editor - *because* it works extremely well out of the box, because you don't *need* to run through ages of setup until it *finally* is close to what ... @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2107875 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-19T13:53:55Z
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@clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente You're confusing cohort effects with demographic effects. Younger people are just people who have had fewer opportunities to properly customize their tooling. It's not that one-size-fits-all fits them, but that the thing with an elastic waist fits marginally better than the thing they haven't tailored yet.
(DIR) Post #2107876 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T14:01:41Z
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@enkiv2 Maybe. But maybe another effect here is that "we", the "older guys on the block", are way too tied and way too much used to the idea that applications *have* to be configurable to the very last bits to eventually see other peoples views on that? @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2107877 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-19T14:04:18Z
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@clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente The idea that applications shouldn't be configurable became trendy four years before I was born (with the release of the Macintosh), & that was its second wind (since the first boom in 'turnkey systems' was in the late 70s). My concern comes from seeing non-technical users struggle to perform tasks that *should* be simple but that the application developers failed to consider.
(DIR) Post #2107878 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T14:10:03Z
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@enkiv2 ... what happens next? Assume you manage to use something such as lua or python to hack up your own extension of that application - just to see that, with an upgrade of the application and changes that are very likely, most of your logic on top will fall to pieces. If you do that, you're in the risk of making at the very least every of the applications own internal APIs public. I'm unsure whether this is good.@clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2107879 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-19T14:35:57Z
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@clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente This kind of freeform extension ultimately means that the whole thing must be live-editable. So, sure, a poorly structured application will require a nearly full rewrite to make it work for its intented function -- but lowering the bar for this kind of modification makes even that easier, and increases the number of people theoretically capable of doing it.
(DIR) Post #2107880 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T14:42:15Z
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@enkiv2 I see some major problems here: If you have a sufficiently complex application (like, in example, one that includes security, authentication, maybe database and filesystem backends), there's a very thin line between making the application extensible and giving users tools to completely destroy it - as in putting data consistency, security requirements, all that effectively at full risk. If you do that, virtually ... @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2107881 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-19T14:44:24Z
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@clacke @Shamar @scolobb @z428 @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente The great thing about *personal* computing is that it's your computer, and you're allowed to destroy it if you want.
(DIR) Post #2108046 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T10:16:46Z
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@Shamar I actually want to give newcomers an entry-point to what #FreeSoftware is. Newcomers that, before making this step, in many case are users making use of technology for a particular purpose. Even being interested in #FreeSoftware, most (if not all) of these folks still want or need their work to be done. They might want #FreeSoftware but they can't or don't want to afford saying "well, now I can't get my work done ... @strypey @ente @aral @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism @snowdrift
(DIR) Post #2108779 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2018-12-19T18:08:15Z
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@alcinnz I'm all for this, but it's unlikely to happen while the people who would have to legislate for it are having lunch with the lobbyists for the US #datafarms. If we can surface the foam of small-medium businesses that respect user freedom, and increase that market (more reliable services for users, more secure jobs for tech workers, more quality #FreeCode), that could contribute to building the political will to enforce anti-trust laws against at least the US datafarms.@pootz
(DIR) Post #2108875 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2018-12-19T18:03:21Z
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@pootz The workers who make iPhones have bigger problems to deal with than improving their UX or environmental impact. You can't just march into China and start organizing them either, unless you want some late night knocks on the door by the Police. I agree that organizing tech workers is a piece of the puzzle, but only one. I know lots of people in tech coops desperate for customers, so organizing customers to buy from coops empowers workers. It's complicated.@clacke @aral
(DIR) Post #2109046 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2018-12-19T18:16:28Z
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@pootz > Doesn't matter if someone would prefer to pay you if your model isn't profitableIt doesn't have to be profitable, as long as it can cover its costs. The main cost in running a software-based business is paying staff, which is why it's a great candidate for worker-owned coops. You need to convince people to pay in $ rather than privacy invasion, so also a good candidate for consumer coops. Have you read 'Ours to Hack and Own'?https://www.opendemocracy.net/oliver-sylvester-bradley/ours-to-hack-and-own@alcinnz @mattcropp @mike_hales
(DIR) Post #2109059 by pootz@mastodon.technology
2018-12-18T19:27:00Z
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@enkiv2Yes to all this.This is all a great case for organizing tech workers to make the demand for publically funded and licensed software like a jobs program or national endowment.@clacke @alcinnz @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2109060 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2018-12-19T18:21:49Z
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@pootz > This is all a great case for organizing tech workers to make the demand for publically funded and licensed software... or organizing anyone who cares. In NZ we got a formal government commitment to release any code written by people working for the public service under free licenses. We did it as an open, civil society coalition (ie #SoftwareFreedom geeks and our #CreativeCommons mates, and a few forward-looking folks from the #Greens)https://www.ict.govt.nz/guidance-and-resources/open-government/new-zealand-government-open-access-and-licensing-nzgoal-framework/nzgoal-se/@enkiv2 #NZGOAL-SE
(DIR) Post #2109357 by alcinnz@floss.social
2018-12-19T18:35:35Z
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@strypey @pootz @enkiv2 There is afterall Lessig's concept that laws, norms, and technology all work in tandem to regulate our behavior. We'll need to tackle each one of those simultaneously to make them work for us.
(DIR) Post #2111018 by Wolf480pl@niu.moe
2018-12-19T19:53:47Z
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@z428 @enkiv2 @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente >older guys on the blockI'm 23.I think applications, if they are to be useful for me, need to be configurable to the very last bits.
(DIR) Post #2111076 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T19:55:41Z
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@Wolf480pl @z428 @enkiv2 @clacke @scolobb @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente 38 here.I don't want configurable applications.I want readable source code to hack.
(DIR) Post #2111108 by 361.xj9@social.sunshinegardens.org
2018-12-19T19:56:53.750370Z
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@Shamar @ente @aral @snowdrift @Purism @scolobb @clacke @enkiv2 @z428 @Wolf480pl 26 and same. fuck configure. #dwm #surf
(DIR) Post #2113166 by Wolf480pl@niu.moe
2018-12-19T21:31:51Z
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@enkiv2 @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente Btw. if we're looking for a GUI exposing composability to the user, maybe we should take inspiration from Minecraft mods? Some of them add a ton of composable devices which can be used to automate things, and these devices often have GUIs to configure their interaction with other devices.
(DIR) Post #2113173 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T08:39:55Z
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@clacke ... actual choices and everything linked to them. This is a problem. And we need to get out of our technical echo chamber to solve this. Trying to tell people they need to learn to make their own tools to be free is, like, five or six levels away from where those folks actually stand.@aral @ente @enkiv2 @Purism @scolobb @Shamar @snowdrift @strypey
(DIR) Post #2113174 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T08:50:16Z
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@z428 @clacke @aral @ente @enkiv2 @Purism @scolobb @snowdrift @strypey Guys, in #Capitalism there is NO WAY to keep #Commons on par with those who own the means of production.We can outsmart them once or twice, but then they exploit us, or break us, or #FUD us, or lobby against us, or throw at beating us as #money as needed because the only thing they CANNOT afford is our message to pass.The only way to win is to change the terrain, to move the fight on dimensions where they are weak.1/
(DIR) Post #2113175 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T08:55:26Z
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@z428 @clacke @aral @ente @enkiv2 @Purism @scolobb @snowdrift @strypey I'm not AGAINST funding #FreeSoftware, feel free to donate your money as you like.I'm not AGAINST building sustainable #BusinessModel that use or build Free Software.But that's is very likely to NOT work, for the reasons above.Worse, it subtracts energy to #Freedom (blamed as "overtly political rhetoric") to support the #Cultural #Hegemony it fight.That's why #education, teaching #Curiosity to #kids, is my ONLY #hope.
(DIR) Post #2113176 by snowdrift@social.coop
2018-12-19T18:40:26Z
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@Shamar In your posts throughout: too much mind-reading. You put words in others' mouths and mistakenly assume intentions and values.You're imagining disagreements that don't exist.Surely you don't oppose coordination and cooperation, right?We don't propose removing any freedoms for forking, redundancy, wheel-reinvention… they *can* be essential.And using money within our capitalist system isn't endorsing capitalism.@z428 @clacke @aral @ente @enkiv2 @Purism @scolobb
(DIR) Post #2113177 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T19:23:42Z
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@snowdrift @z428 @clacke @aral @ente @enkiv2 @Purism @scolobb Cool!I didn't know about my mind reading powers! :-DJust kidding.If we agree in the matter you should really fix that text.Some passages incompatible with #FreeSoftware:1. "This may indicate merely an increased interest in #FLOSS among developers who would not likely reach their goals under any circumstances"1/
(DIR) Post #2113178 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T19:30:05Z
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@snowdrift @z428 @clacke @aral @ente @enkiv2 @Purism @scolobb 2. "Many projects are still essentially lone #developers “scratching an itch” .. so #development is heavily weighted toward whatever interests individual developers"3. "the false premise that enthusiasts tinkering on their own things will somehow deliver usable and meaningful FLO technology to the public."2/
(DIR) Post #2113179 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T19:35:33Z
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@snowdrift @z428 @clacke @aral @ente @enkiv2 @Purism @scolobb 4. "overtly political rhetoric of software #freedom"5. "#OpenSource succeeded at [...] addressing the ambiguity about price vs #freedom."6. "Today, many non-partisans recognize both terms with combinations like #FOSS or #FLOSS” (because they ARE partisans, precisely #OSS partisans)3/
(DIR) Post #2113180 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T19:43:16Z
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@snowdrift @z428 @clacke @aral @ente @enkiv2 @Purism @scolobb 7. "easier forking has also lead to an increase in project schisms and a growing number of fragmented projects."There's nothing wrong in coordination or collecting and distributing money.But your text continously blame #hackers choice to fork or to donate the world a tool or to play with code.You are serving #OSS developers...4/
(DIR) Post #2113181 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T19:48:45Z
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@snowdrift @z428 @clacke @aral @ente @enkiv2 @Purism @scolobb ...and this is totally fine and admirable.More: you are trying to support the development of #OSS that serve #ethical values that I share and I totally LOVE it.BUT #FreeSoftware is a different thing.If you want to serve OSS fine: just remove FL.If you want to serve #FS too, stop blaming our "unsustainable model": we call it #gift.
(DIR) Post #2113182 by snowdrift@social.coop
2018-12-19T21:03:24Z
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@Shamar Thanks for the pointed and constructive feedback!We may go ahead and update those texts…But clarification: we're don't *blame* free-software devs. We *celebrate* freedom to hack, fork, etc. — we're just saying it's naive to think that those things will *necessarily* deliver adequate freedoms and ethical software to all. Often cooperation, resources, and explicit ethical *intentions* make the difference in *addition* to hacking.@z428 @clacke @aral @ente @enkiv2 @Purism @scolobb
(DIR) Post #2113902 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-19T22:01:55Z
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@Wolf480pl I'll consider it. My current inspirations are Smalltalk-80, Morphic, and Prograph.@clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2115857 by snowdrift@social.coop
2018-12-19T22:18:03Z
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@Shamar > "This may indicate merely an increased interest in #FLOSS among developers who would not likely reach their goals under any circumstances"a confusing sentence indeed. Updated to:"Of course, there will always be lots of trials and hacks that don't continue long-term, and that's fine — it just indicates healthy creativity."incidentally, you must've read decent amount of our wiki to see that old floss-funding-history article…@z428 @clacke @aral @ente @enkiv2 @Purism @scolobb
(DIR) Post #2115858 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T22:56:24Z
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@snowdrift @z428 @clacke @aral @ente @enkiv2 @Purism @scolobb To be honest I have read that article and few pages more. But I've read that article a couple of times before as it reached my fediverse timelinea couple of times.I'm glad to help.I develop an operating system as a gift, thinking of the world I would like for my daughters and I hate when people tell me I should hack Linux instead...
(DIR) Post #2115859 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T23:02:57Z
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@snowdrift @z428 @clacke @aral @ente @enkiv2 @Purism @scolobb ... because I could earn a living by coding #FreeSoftware.I know I could, but that's not what I want.Most people who talk about #FLOSS actually marginalize #hackers to please users or corporations, and I hate this.Think about #TempleOS: Terry Davis couldn't ever attend to #FOSDEM, despite being a great #hacker with an unique...
(DIR) Post #2115860 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T23:10:26Z
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@snowdrift @z428 @clacke @aral @ente @enkiv2 @Purism @scolobb ...perspective.He would have certainly violated the #CoC because of his mental disease.Yet #TempleOS is one of the best #FreeSoftware #hack out there.But nobody would pay for it.And that's fine: the author never asked for #money.Terry Davis is a corner stone for Free Software: if he is not welcome, no #hacker is.
(DIR) Post #2118689 by wolftune@social.coop
2018-12-19T23:16:28Z
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@Shamar As one of the Snowdrift.coop volunteers (none of the team is paid at this point), I can speak to my own person motivations:If there were a way to simply *delete* money from the surveillance-capitalist tech companies even without funding FLO software, I'd pull that lever.Free Software can benefit greatly from funding, but it's just a means to an end (a world where technology actually serves the public interest)@snowdrift @z428 @clacke @aral @ente @enkiv2 @Purism @scolobb
(DIR) Post #2118690 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T23:28:39Z
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@wolftune @snowdrift @z428 @clacke @aral @ente @enkiv2 @Purism @scolobb We agree on this goal.I just think that to reach this goal we need to teach people to hack their own software and we need to build software people can hack.The two go together.They need and help each other.That's why to me, the right to fork freely and bluntly is so important! :-)Let's try. It will be fun!
(DIR) Post #2118691 by wolftune@social.coop
2018-12-19T23:36:02Z
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@Shamar AgreedBut win-win is when people both hack their own software *and* share their hacks back upstream to benefit everyone.The essential *right* to fork doesn't mean it's always good to fork if you can cooperate instead. It varies case-to-case, but usually cooperation is better.And people who do less hacking shouldn't be mistreated or restricted by the technology. Hacking shouldn't be *required* in order to avoid abuse.@snowdrift @z428 @clacke @aral @ente @enkiv2 @Purism @scolobb
(DIR) Post #2126116 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-19T22:07:54Z
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@Wolf480pl BTW, some other folks (notably @haitch & @natecull ) are also working on or theorizing about composable UIs in some capacity. (There are others whose names I've forgotten.)@clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2137283 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-19T13:46:07Z
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@clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @z428 @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente The sweet spot for the application model is when the application has just enough overlap with the most common problem requirements that it's marginally easier to use the application plus workarounds than not to use the application at all, and over time mere exposure can make the problem fit seem better (as the workarounds become habit), but sheer variety of problems sets a low upper limit on problem fit for single-use apps.
(DIR) Post #2137284 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-19T13:56:28Z
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@enkiv2 I get your point. I'm just not really convinced, without having facts or figures to express why. Maybe it would be an interesting challenge to explore: Is it more effective to make applications that are pretty much extensible and customizable, or is it more effective to build a set of applications *sharply* and strictly focussed to meeting an actual business case, developed very closely to a set of representative users?@clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2137285 by natecull@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T22:36:46Z
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@z428 @enkiv2 @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente "or is it more effective to build a set of applications *sharply* and strictly focussed to meeting an actual business case"The words "business case" are important in this sentence.The applications I want composable UI for are things that have nothing to do with business and therefore there IS no business case and will never be one, so apps will never be made.I want UI to help me explore personal data.
(DIR) Post #2137286 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-20T16:04:14Z
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@natecull Fully agree. Composable UIs still are a feature approach painfully underrated in most real-world applications. This would solve *a lot* of problems.@enkiv2 @clacke @Shamar @scolobb @strypey @Purism @snowdrift @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2137294 by natecull@mastodon.social
2018-12-19T23:03:54Z
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@dgold @scolobb @Shamar @snowdrift @aral @strypey @z428 @Purism @ente @clacke @enkiv2 I do very little actual programming but I prefer very stripped down text editors when I do.TextPad, actually.Sometimes even Notepad. Sometimes even literally just 'type interactively at a command line prompt and copy/paste'.Not many tools make this enjoyable however.
(DIR) Post #2137295 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-20T16:01:21Z
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@natecull Guilty as charged for excessively using #vscode, to be honest - because, out of the box, in many cases it *just works* and shows a lot of small details (just looking at #gitlens addon) that seem so *incredibly* obvious that it's a bit discouraging to see it needed Microsoft to bring these to development tools, rather than some of the #FLOSS developer tool hackers. Yes, some of the things ... @dgold @scolobb @Shamar @snowdrift @aral @strypey @Purism @ente @clacke @enkiv2
(DIR) Post #2137847 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-12-20T17:38:33Z
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@clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @strypey I don't think that's true; it would be very healthy for everyone to reason everything from first principles. Some aspects of society would certainly change as a result; that is a benefit, not a drawback.
(DIR) Post #2137875 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-12-20T17:40:26Z
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@z428 @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism Alternatively: how can we remove the "just" from "volunteer work" and make it sustainable and scalable? You seem to be presupposing the conclusion before you begin the argument.
(DIR) Post #2156331 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-21T07:25:27Z
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@kragen Thanks for the question, you're not completely wrong - or my wording is a bit off: Volunteer work seems a good thing. The bad thing seems volunteer work done by people in their spare time while they need to do have a dayjob to be able to afford actually having spare time they could spend on coding. If people work on #FLOSS and are good at doing that, this provides value to a society.We should find ways to make sure ... @ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2156358 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-21T07:27:32Z
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@kragen ... that, if people create value just like this, they are actually able to do so without having all too much to worry how to pay their bills at the end of the month. In a way, maybe it comes down to a question: What kind of value (in terms of money, too) does #FLOSS represent for us? How are we willing to support that idea to make it work out?@ente @aral @strypey @clacke @enkiv2 @scolobb @Purism
(DIR) Post #2156833 by clacke@libranet.de
2018-12-21T07:58:34Z
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@kragen I think we're simply going to have to disagree on the benefits of reasoning "everything" from first principles, unless you have a concrete example of someone who reasoned their own way into even 17th century math and physics, which we learn in primary school. That person would have to be more clever than Isaac Newton, one of the brightest people who ever lived, who himself claimed to be standing on the shoulders of giants. For more discussion on this subtopic, see the thread anticapitalist.party/@Angle/101271636653309487 /by @Angle
(DIR) Post #2164694 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-20T16:02:32Z
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@dgold ... I might be capable of doing, too, in vim or emacs - but with a considerate effort of configuration and reaching, like, at best 90% of the "quality" these features do have in #vscode . @scolobb @natecull @Shamar @snowdrift @aral @strypey @Purism @ente @clacke @enkiv2
(DIR) Post #2164696 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-21T14:28:50Z
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@clacke @Shamar @natecull @scolobb @strypey @z428 @snowdrift @Purism @dgold @aral @ente The mystification of vi is certainly overblown. It belongs to a generation of tools where users are expected to spend a minute or two reading documentation before using them -- and vi will be unusable without that minute or two -- but it doesn't take longer than a minute to learn the 3 or 4 behaviors necessary to edit quickly in vi, & it takes another minute to learn stuff that rockets you beyond VS.
(DIR) Post #2164697 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-21T14:30:32Z
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@clacke @Shamar @scolobb @natecull @strypey @z428 @snowdrift @Purism @dgold @aral @ente (I use it because, unlike GUI editors, it doesn't take multiple seconds for things I type to appear in a terminal window.)
(DIR) Post #2164698 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-21T14:54:39Z
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@clacke @scolobb @natecull @strypey @z428 @snowdrift @Purism @aral @ente I mostly agree with you @enkiv2, but... you should be more careful with your language... 🤣If you talk about "multiple seconds" you reveal you are comparing an #editor with a #browser abused to edit file, it's totally unfair! It's too easy to win this way! 😉@dgold is just misinterpreting the effect of #legacy: habit bind first and foremost our minds, not our tools.IMHO, we shouldn't be using VT200 on a raster screen.
(DIR) Post #2164699 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-21T14:58:44Z
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@clacke @scolobb @natecull @strypey @z428 @snowdrift @Purism @aral @ente @dgold The fact that textual terminal is the best we can do (and often it is, as @enkiv2 pointed out) doesn't say much about the quality of the tools we use in it.It's just that #Informatics is still VERY #primitive.#CLI are great in a graphical system (dmenu is that), and we should be able to compose GUI like we do with command lines.#Browsers are NOT the solution, they are NOT composable, they are slow and unsafe.
(DIR) Post #2175052 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-21T15:05:55Z
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@clacke @scolobb @natecull @strypey @z428 @snowdrift @Purism @aral @ente @enkiv2 So, @dgold, it's not that editor lovers try to keep them obscure, it's that they are trying to compensate for primitive operating systems and ridiculous graphical metaphores (that just follow #fashion bullshit and #hype) instead of trying to #hack something new because "hey! don't make the users think!"Users are humans.And usually humans have brains.And brains can learn.
(DIR) Post #2175054 by 361.xj9@social.sunshinegardens.org
2018-12-21T22:26:49.794518Z
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@dgold @Shamar @enkiv2 > Users needing to think (more correctly described as to refer to a “priesthood”) to quit out of an editor is not friendly, its not associative, its deliberate exclusionary action.i'm not sure how :wq can be construed as exclusionary if the are loads of public documents that explain how to use vim. nobody is trying to prevent people from picking up vim, it just happens to work very differently from your typical graphical editor.unless of course ANY use of non-standard UX is an exclusionary action. then the question becomes, what is "standard UX"? is the standard based on people with a background in a particular OS? do we standardize on an implementation or do we need a standards committee to figure this out?i'd also challenge the assumption that "users needing to think" is a problem. i would hope that people DO spend some time thinking about what they are doing in front of a computer. maybe not at the level of writing/debugging code, but at the very least i would hope that users are open to engaging intellectually with the system instead of treating it as an inscrutable black box.
(DIR) Post #2177799 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-21T22:10:34Z
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@dgold @enkiv2 I think you are overlooking a wide variety of relevant facts that could better explain your observations than an evil #elitism of users.Each design choice of the #editor we are talking about were pretty obvious given the #hardware and the #culture users had when these software were created. If you look at keyboards back then they might even be quite ergonomic for those users.Then things changed and these editors grew more complex and powerful1/
(DIR) Post #2177800 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-21T22:17:38Z
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@dgold @enkiv2 but people were still used to them and kept improving them to suit their needs, increasing their power and their complexity... and so on.Still some design decision (lisp & combos with Emacs, modal editing in vim) were already well known to their users that would have to learn a different editor if thos were changed.I often say to my daughter: everything is easy if you know how it works.To Emacs users Emacs IS easy.To Vim users Vim IS easy.2/
(DIR) Post #2177801 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-21T22:30:18Z
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@dgold @enkiv2 So those users (some of which are also editors' developes) have no reason to adopt or develop another editor.Meanwhile VT200 is still the best #UI we can think.Now, to Debian users #Debian IS easy.So to a Debian developer there is no need to make in simpler than it is.Yet, why #ubuntu exists?#Marketing.Same with editors: people tend to suggest the best tool they use to newcomers. And incidetally the best editors work like this!3/
(DIR) Post #2177802 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-21T22:42:11Z
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@dgold @enkiv2 Sometimes people suggest tools with a steep learning curve because they think the end result will empower the users: it's not elitism, it's a welcome, it's trying to help.Asking people to learn how to use a composable #ui will empower them.Unfortunately most #GUI are not composable.
(DIR) Post #2177804 by 361.xj9@social.sunshinegardens.org
2018-12-22T00:20:13.379872Z
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@dgold @Shamar @enkiv2 > That’s the very fucking definition of elitism. If you can summit this monster mountain you can join the club.this is true for any reasonably complex tool. it is certainly possible that vim and emacs have overly complex user interfaces, but i find them both to be very productive for my work. the same is true of many industrial tools. $random_person *probably* can't operate a trash compacter safely, but you wouldn't accuse anyone of being elitist in this case, would you?i can understand disliking emacs and vim, but i don't think the elitist argument holds up well.
(DIR) Post #2177976 by Shamar@mastodon.social
2018-12-21T22:49:38Z
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@xj9 @dgold @enkiv2 OTOH we cannot say the reasons who influenced the creation of Emacs and Vi still hold!The fact is: why we have to choose between browser slow "Modern" editors and fast and effective old ones? Because we haven't been able to create something better!
(DIR) Post #2219175 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-21T13:46:21Z
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@clacke @scolobb @kragen @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente Maybe this is a hot take but the value-cost connection isn't consistent enough to have any of the hypothetical positive yields & is mostly just enforced in ways that make sure important necessities remain expensive, so we probably ought to cut it entirely. Cost-value is a bad proxy for both labor-value and use-value, and use-value ought to be proportional to availability, not inversely proportional, anyhow.
(DIR) Post #2219176 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-21T13:48:26Z
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@clacke @scolobb @kragen @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente With physical items there's a large constant labor-value of mere reproduction (though mass production dilutes that), but with software the marginal cost of reproduction approaches zero (and the labor value of reproduction *is* zero), so cost-value can go to zero, allowing use-value to become proportional to availability.
(DIR) Post #2219177 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-21T13:49:21Z
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@clacke @scolobb @kragen @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente (On top of that, while materials cost is not zero, it's really close.)
(DIR) Post #2219178 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-21T13:54:38Z
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@enkiv2 ... survive in our "as-is" world with all of its boundaries, conceptual approaches and limits? That's not entirely a value/cost connection, I think, but more one of "it's important enough to us to make sure it doesn't fail" - either by sell-out or by the developer discontinuing a project in example due to lack of time because of dayjob and all. 😉 @clacke @scolobb @kragen @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2219179 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-21T14:01:57Z
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@clacke @scolobb @kragen @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente Developing free software (as opposed to open source software) is already a radical political statement whose power is backed from the self-sacrifice it implies. Open source has been successful by reframing that same act as an entirely un-radical gift of free labor to corporations. If we then make it even less radical by making it the same thing as contract work, we're probably going in the wrong direction.
(DIR) Post #2219180 by enkiv2@eldritch.cafe
2018-12-21T14:05:31Z
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@clacke @scolobb @kragen @strypey @z428 @Purism @aral @ente Ultimately the most radical thing about free software is that it *isn't* transactional. In a gift economy, your status is related to a habit of giving away value, and that habit is a proxy indicator for supporting your community. This kind of fuzzy indirectness makes support possible when the underlying situation isn't legible -- when the reason somebody needs to be supported can't be easily summarized.
(DIR) Post #2219609 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-12-23T15:20:00Z
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@z428 @enkiv2 @clacke @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente I think the primary thing stopping selling out is precisely the lack of expectation that writing free software will be profitable. If someone approaches it as a way to get money for themself, they will be constantly looking for ways to monetize, and selling out their users is usually the most profitable.
(DIR) Post #2219675 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-12-23T15:22:08Z
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@clacke @Angle You can reason things from first principles without reasoning them on your own.
(DIR) Post #2221542 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-23T16:51:40Z
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@kragen Difficult. There is a line between that and working on #FLOSS being a privilege only available to those who don't have to worry about how to pay their bills. If #FLOSS fully depends on developers earning a living in dayjobs elsewhere, how "free" it will be?@enkiv2 @clacke @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2222235 by alcinnz@floss.social
2018-12-23T17:29:16Z
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@kragen @z428 @enkiv2 @clacke @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente I approach it as something that should be profitable (or rather cover it's costs) but isn't.But I will not compromise on The Four Freedoms.
(DIR) Post #2222308 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-23T17:32:20Z
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@alcinnz I hardly want to compromise The Four Freedoms generally, but playing devils advocate for a moment: Should whe test the Four Freedoms in todays context? It seems these made much more sense back "then" (when computing was a small community of like-minded people and all of them to some degree both "users" and "creators") than "now" (when an immensely large crowd is likely to be "users" of "gratis" software who will ...@kragen @enkiv2 @clacke @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2222329 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-23T17:33:55Z
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@alcinnz ... never ever even *think* about doing anything than making "free copies" and "free use" of Software Libre). That's not per se a bad thing, but it at least *seems* bit of a different playing field now vs. "then"? Feel free to set me right here, though - feeling a bit uncomfortable with this thought, yet just wondering... 😉 @kragen @enkiv2 @clacke @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2222770 by alcinnz@floss.social
2018-12-23T17:55:46Z
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@z428 @kragen @enkiv2 @clacke @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente I see huge value in that freedom, but maybe we can be a bit more nuanced about it.The ability to fork a project is an important check and balance against it failing to serve it's community. As is incorporating it into another project. Giving it to friends/employees/contractors is vital for non-techies to take advantage of the freedom to modify. And it's just silly if you can't copy for personal use.
(DIR) Post #2223176 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-23T18:15:42Z
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@alcinnz Fully agree. Maybe I'm also seeing a problem where there is none. However I wonder whether right now, to a majority, "Software Libre" boils down to software that can "gratis" be used and shared without any obligations - and whether this comes with the risk of transforming the #FLOSS community in a way not really desirable.@kragen @enkiv2 @clacke @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente
(DIR) Post #2223546 by alcinnz@floss.social
2018-12-23T18:33:31Z
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@z428 @kragen @enkiv2 @clacke @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente Sigh. I know...Reddit once really pecked elementary to figurative death over suggesting otherwise. I still come across comments online that still hold a grudge, but thankfully it seems the wounds have mostly healed.
(DIR) Post #2241281 by z428@social.tchncs.de
2018-12-24T09:32:38Z
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@alcinnz Oh. Link, please? #elementaryos are among those I really would like to see succeed, despite all issues and disputes. They are doing a few rather good things.@kragen @enkiv2 @clacke @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral @ente@chaos.socia
(DIR) Post #2241490 by alcinnz@floss.social
2018-12-24T09:45:09Z
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@z428 @kragen @enkiv2 @clacke @scolobb @strypey @Purism @aral I'm sorry, I can't recall a link. It's been a while ago now.