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Comment by xiaoyu2006

20 hours ago

Turns out RMS has always been right. How surprising.

Turns out that identifying a problem doesn't help without a workable solution/alternative.

  • I hate this trite and the managers that say "don't bring me problems, bring me solutions" nonsense. I'm not the person to be able to fix it so the solution is make the problem known so others responsible can fix it. If I could fix it, I wouldn't be telling you about the problem. If anything, I would tell you how I fixed an issue in some stand up or other of the many meetings scheduled keeping me from working.

    • I am only aware of two solutions:

      1) proof of identity, tying accounts to real-world things that are hard or impossible to replicate

      2) proof of work, tying accounts or actions to the ability to run computations

      Proof of identity in theory can solve the problem but at the cost of privacy.

      Proof of work can be defeated but has the possibility of preserving privacy.

      4 replies →

What is RMS’ solution to this problem?

  • Uncompromisingly insist on only using things you have ultimate ownership and control over, even when that means dramatic and life-altering inconvenience, and where those things don't exist, build them yourself.

    Unfortunately, "build it yourself" is relatively easy when it comes to software, and almost impossible when it comes to the hardware running that software. It doesn't matter if you have full ownership of a complete open-source stack if no hardware manufacturer will permit you to run unsigned arbitrary code. The lack of open hardware--chips that you could build in your garage using materials nobody could reasonably prevent you from acquiring--is the lynchpin upon which open source software will wither and die.

    • There is already plenty of open hardware, it's just not this-year's-top-performance.

      In the category of ~1-3 years' performance lag you get Rockchip and friends, which are closed hardware that allows open computation. See computers made by the company MNT as an example.

      In the category of ~5 years' performance lag you get "soft" cores, where you buy an FPGA (dynamically reprogrammable hardware) and make it run a CPU you design yourself. If you want to, for example, make your CPU have more cache and fewer ALUs, you can do that by tweaking some files and reprogramming the FPGA. This has a cost in terms of power efficiency and runtime speed, but you can absolutely run a full Linux desktop experience on an FPGA today, and the hardware has no way to try to prevent you from running any software.

      You can solve the problem of all the cellular basebands being closed source with either software-defined-radio or using a closed USB/PCIe cellular modem connected to an open processor.

  • In Eve online you used to be able to have people (outside your contacts list) pay some cash in escrow to send you a message.

  • I know what his solution is not. It's not a mechanism that conveniently enables the fine-grained surveillance of people that just so happens to be google's business model.

    • I specifically asked the question I did because rejecting solutions without proposing your own is a great way to not solve the problem.

Indeed, occasionally hammers do find nails to hit.

  • Strange analogy considering that RMS got to where he is precisely by finding nails to hit much, much more than occasionally, and much, much more than most hammers.

    • I think it hits perfectly. He espouses that almost every vendor everywhere is doing something immoral and it will inevitably be used against you. Eventually, some of these predictions come true enough for some part of his audiences.

      I don't think you've made a point about his abilities. I do think you've restated his proclivities, which reinforces the basis for the quip.

      1 reply →

If RMS said not to trust Google's self-proclaimed altruism and relationship with open source, yeah. I always assumed that was a backstab waiting to happen. But that only meant I used an iPhone and didn't care that it was more closed than Android, not that I got an Arch Linux phone or something. (And a Mac more importantly, but there's not really a Google counterpart to that.)