fluffrabbit {l Wrote}:I feel like you're doing philosophical gymnastics to sway me to a perspective that others in this thread have already stated but that you're too polite to say directly. And I disagree.
That's the misconception. I have no hope of swaying you, I'm only defending my position on the matter. And part of the reason I'm defending it is that I think you're misrepresenting it.
I don't think it's deliberate, I'm not even sure you know my position. But whenever I find something I consider a strawman, (even unintended, because I'm not accusing you of being dishonest) I feel like correcting it. If I think someone's trolling, it's probably worth giving up-- but I don't think you're trolling. And I don't intend to change your mind, either.
I don't like Microsoft, I don't like the Android ecosystem, but at some fundamental level these things have some really awesome software if you can get past the bullshit.
I'm a librarian at heart, as well as a free software advocate, as well as a coder. I would hope for people to salvage as much of the history of software as possible-- one of the things I think the FSF fails to do is encourage more development of free software. It's in line with their mission, though not their methodology. And the reason it's important, is that companies are trying to shut down free software development-- and free software probably doesn't have the numbers anymore to stop them. Recruitment is necessary. (Relax, I don't mean you. We are agreed that you probably don't want to be part of this.)
"Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to recruit me."
"I am not trying to recruit you. Would you like me to recruit you, is that what you're trying to tell me?"
As for init systems, who cares?
Now THAT is an appeal to popularity. It's also a rhetorical question that pretends people don't care, when in fact quite a few people have worked for the past 5 years to do something about it.
typical apps won't even notice.
I don't know what a typical app is, but I have along with quite a few others, noticed an ongoing degradation in the quality of distros that chose systemd.
I think there is a strong argument for a lighter init system when you consider all the daemons running on larger Linux distros, which you may not want.
I am all in favour of a variety of init systems for a variety of purposes, including lighter ones.
But in my opinion, this issue is way more about software than it is about politics.
Yes, but im my opinion, I have more evidence at my disposal to say otherwise. It's not going to win an argument, though I know people that have amassed this evidence for years. For a taste of it, try this book: (I'm not suggesting you read it, but it contains plenty of argument if you want a to have a summary poke at it.)
http://techrights.org/wp-content/upload ... 06/p12.pdfhttp://techrights.org/wp-content/upload ... 06/p48.pdfhttp://techrights.org/wp-content/upload ... 6/p813.pdfhttp://techrights.org/wp-content/upload ... /p1418.pdfhttp://techrights.org/wp-content/upload ... /p1923.pdfhttp://techrights.org/wp-content/upload ... /p2429.pdfhttp://techrights.org/wp-content/upload ... /p2934.pdfhttp://techrights.org/wp-content/upload ... /p3539.pdfhttp://techrights.org/wp-content/upload ... /p3947.pdfhttp://techrights.org/wp-content/upload ... /p4860.pdfhttp://techrights.org/wp-content/upload ... /p6071.pdfIf you'd like something heavier or more thoroughly-researched, that book reminded someone on soylentnews of a similar book written about IBM and their ruthless business tactics, which are similar in nature. I would be happy to fetch the title for you.
Note also that I predicted Red Hat would be purchased just months prior to IBM buying them. I predicted it would go to Microsoft (this was right after the GitHub acquisition) though Microsoft
was considered as a buyer and Red Hat did get purchased by a similar company.
When you download Ubuntu, you know it's going to be political because Canonical wants to make money. You know what you're getting.
This is an oversimplification, I'm not against commercialism and neither is the FSF.
I don't separate OSS from FS. It's frustrating when people try to make a movement out of things.
OSS wouldn't exist without Stallman and the FSF. The reason most people don't separate the two is that OSS has spent years conflating two things, rewriting history and selling out to monopolies.
Free software is anti-monopoly.
You don't "win" anything by ceding voluntarily to your opponent
anything that isn't already theirs (you can cede what is won fair and square, but throwing a fight is an act of dishonesty or fraud.)
What Open Source has "won" is a seat at the table, but it was someone else's table and they traded it for a seat. Even that place that the table is not sustainable. Someone else built that table-- and they reduced it from a movement-- a quest for independence and autonomy-- to a "development methodology".
Even OSI Co-founder Bruce Perens has this to say about the co-opting of Free Software by Open Source:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1 ... 01641.htmlSo everyone is entitled to their opinion, but arguments that require re-writing history are doomed in the light of a more honest take on things. And Open Source is collapsing. GitHub, Red Hat and the Linux Foundation are all prominent examples. Canonical is around the corner-- it seems inevitable.
I sometimes go to this forum to take refuge from all the proprietary crap I have to use, but there needs to be balance, and when things swing too far to the opposite extreme, I can recognize the difference between technical issues and whining. I'm not calling anyone here a whiner, but IMHO some folks go too far.
Could you be more specific? We all have our favourite fallacies (that other people lean on.) One of my favourites is Appeal to Moderation-- honest compromise is good when it truly benefits everyone, but a 50/50 compromise between a Lie and a Truth is still a lie, it's just less of one.
Most software issues are due to bad programming, not design decisions.
A bad design is an act of bad programming. A monolith is a fair compromise for a kernel, but modular software as a rule is still better. Experience ought to show that monolithic software is easier to sell, but it's easier to mess up. The growing trend from most things modular to most things monolithic is an unmitigated design disaster.
Most of the shit you put up with is incompetence disguised as politics.
That's what most politics is for-- to disguise incompetence and theft as progress.
The rest of politics (including the study of history) is for
uncovering that incompetence and theft.
As for OSI, what they're doing is deeply political. They have enjoyed fleecing people for years, with stories of how what they're doing somehow transcends the political nature of free software. But their history is one of conquest and theft, and you can't have conquest without politics-- you can still pretend.
You're a BSD fan. BSD was founded on a development methodology, which resulted long-term in the many-years-long battle to wrest the right to develop BSD freely from a monopoly which tried to own what was (re)created by the public. Even BSD is not immune to politics. The question is, why would you want it to be apolitical on one side, when it is political on others?
That's a call for voluntary impotence, for being powerless. The right to develop BSD freely took politics for many years to be possible. If it had succeeded earlier on, or if AT&T had not forced such political effort to defend the rights of BSD developers, the FSF might not exist in the first place.
You can pretend politics don't exist or deny their relevance, but development will be affected by them either way. Not decreasingly so, but of late the threats are increasing-- and increasingly well-documented, as well. Shall we ignore them? You're free to do so. Please try to understand if not all of us do.