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Richard Stallman's Dissenting View of Steve Jobs
Garabito writes "Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, has posted his not-so-fond memories of Steve Jobs on his personal site, saying, 'As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die — not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.' His statement has spurred reaction from the community; some even asking to the Free Software movement to find a new voice."
Look, I know no one likes to speak ill of the dead and all, but geez, last week's lovefest got WAY WAY WAY out of hand. Jobs was an important figure, no doubt, but the over-the-top platitudes were often more humorous and bizarre than heartfelt or touching. There were "expert" commentators on CNN calling Jobs the "most important person in the history of technology" with straight faces. People who didn't even KNOW the guy were crying like their daddy had just died. At one point I think I saw Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper make a teary-eyed pledge to throw themselves on his funeral pyre.
I doubt Jesus' apostles were as upset after the crucifixion as some of the supposedly objective "experts" and "journalists" I saw last week. It's not like I expected them to get into the more negative and tawdry aspects of his past with his body still warm, but I didn't expect such unabashed hero-worship and hagiography either. It was just shameful.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
He specifically states he was not happy to see Jobs die.
I see you trollin'.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
It's interesting that persons promoting freedom want to restrict what other people do.
Because we'd clearly be most free, when there are absolutely no restrictions on what people do. For example, if you stop me from assaulting you, then I'm clearly not free at all am I?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
my account of Stallman's appearance at the Yorktown HS computer club.
Meh. Stalman only cares about "sustainable" freedom. Apple, and Jobs, were NO champions of that cause. We all know the very good things about Apple, but Stalman keeps in mind the BAD things, such as extreme vendor lock-in, anti-privacy instances, market lock-in (closed app-store, anyone), extreme censorship against FLOSS, hostile behavior towards other companies and hostile behavior towards competing products...
We are already screwed if people take Stalman as the corporate image of Linux. But that doesn't mean the guy is wrong.
Jobs and his company are based entirely on control of other people's property. You can't put the OS on your own hardware, you can't run your own apps on the iPod Touch / iPhone without hacking it, you can't use products which directly compete with Apple's offering on either either (heh). Are you all forgetting iTunes prior to the catalogue being converted to DRM-free MP3s?
Horrible people can do good things just as good people can do horrible things, and a lot of the things Jobs did in computing were horrible. Pretty, and king of usability, but all a thing veneer on something fundamentally malign.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I'm not exactly fan of Apple, but Richard Stallman has no merits to basically say he's glad Steve Jobs is dead.
There is no merit (see what I did there? In case you didn't, I used the word correctly) to the assertion that someone who has said they are not glad someone is dead is glad that they are dead. I am not glad that Jobs died either, but I am glad he won't be at the helm of Apple Computer, Inc.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Richard Stallman has no merits to basically say he's glad Steve Jobs is dead.
He didn't say that. He said, 'I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone.'
Linux geeks ... are happy to see people die.
He did not say that. He said, 'I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone.'
apart from the a few geeks, people in the real world really don't care about his views or what he is trying to promote.
Maybe you don't know what web site this is.
Ubuntu has tried to fix that with Linux, but it's still far from Mac OSX or even Windows. ... I'm not exactly fan of Apple
Again, I think you're not on the right web site, and you probably really are an Apple fan.
You don't have to have liked him, but you could have at least shown some respect rather than making the GNU (And by association, Linux, even though we hate you) community look like tools, instead of just yourself as you usually do.
Jobs may have helped bring about some significant technologies. But Apple, and Jobs, come no where near what the fanboys think. And in many respects, Jobs was just another scam artist.
http://techrights.org/2011/10/07/steve-jobs/
that makes me glad that I do not have a television. It is easy to ignore the stupid on the internet. There is plenty of stupid on the internet, but it is easy to ignore it.
The link given on /. and latimes leads to a bullet point list of posts. The anchor jumps you to Stallman's Oct 6 bullet point, but I can't find the a link to the full article?!
http://stallman.org/archives/2011-jul-oct.html#06_October_2011_(Steve_Jobs)
What did I miss?
... but I agree with stallman. Jobs figured out that you can make aesthetically pleasing stuff and make a lot of profit off simplifying hardware design for everyday people BUT this has a negative effect on those who actually use computers and computing devices as something beyond a toaster or glorified television. Jobs just turned computing devices into consumer items. The downside is that his companies success with walled gardens is giving a lot of other companies and developers the same idea of creating walled gardens where you never own anything, can't modify it, etc. A kind of kind of feudalistic computing.
I've watched gaming go downhill over the last 10 years with the rise shit like world of warcraft showing everyone the path to walled garden land because there are enough stupid people who don't give a shit about gaming that will just take it up the ass because they aren't passionate about games. So we get things like Starcraft 2 chained to online, no LAN, we get permanent online DRM being pushed and crap like onlive. At this point I really want to burn down the software industry. I remember a time when blizzard wasn't as evil as it is today and you actually were treated like a customer rather then a magpie with a wallet.
In the same way, people who work in computing, and do computing and are passionate about computing need freedom from corporate tyranny to innovate. Each generation of tinkering kids becomes the next set of developers/entrepreneurs/innovators. To lock everything behind a walled garden just creates a big mess and ensures solutions are suffocated or co-opted for someones personal greed with a net negative for humanity as a whole.
All great innovations are built upon mountains of others that came before them, locking them down is just a surefire way to suffocate progress.
Flamebait? If my comment is flamebait, then this whole story is flamebait, and it should never have reached the main page. Moderation by Apple shill, or Big Media shill? You decide.
Either way, I can afford the karma.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It got a bit pathetic with people running around talking about how Steve Jobs invented the mouse, the personal computer, the smartphone, the media player, the tablet, and practically sliced bread. The guy was an excellent product designer with a good eye for where the market was going to go next. He was no more instrumental in shaping 21st century society than any other fashion designer. And yay, he was yet another ruthless capitalist, yawn!
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
for ReadWriteWeb to find a new editor, one that doesn't pander to fanboys
Steve Jobs was also in part responsible for a lot of bad, remember the Foxconn worker 'suicide'? Or how about suing journalists? Or hiring security that pretended to be police? Or requiring employees submit to searches or be fired?
Stallman is an asshole.
With that out of the way, he speaks true. I abandoned everything Apple for exactly the reasons he pointed out and I hope, as Stallman does, that Apple will become less anally retentive in the future.
Stallman is that guy who takes his job way to seriously. He loses touch with reality, he loses friends, his only friends are those with the same goals, but he even dismisses them for not being as committed as he is. In the end Stallman does the real work needed by the FOSS movement, he benefits the movement greatly, however he's like the overnight shift in a 24 hour production facility. Often the very best workers are on the overnight shift, not because you don't want the secrets to their efficiency accidentally leaked to someone passing through, but because the most talented people are often such eccentric weirdo's you only want the results of their work seen, not the workers themselves.
That last article condemning Stallman was just completely out of tune with the man himself. He wasn't hateful towards Job's himself, Stallman has a goal in mind and he wont rest until it's accomplished. He will never accomplish it. His goal of all software being 100% open source, patent free, and free in every way will never happen, and it's one of the places I differ with him. I support someones right to make money off of software, I do agree FOSS is the way to go and I do think even closed source software should eventually become open, but I do support someone closing source for a time to make a profit, and this is where I disagree with Stallman, who I see as an Old Testament Prophet of the Open Code.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Just because Jobs was innovative, popular and successful doesn't mean he was a saint. Considering his closed hardware platforms, Jobs showed us that his views were perhaps even more the antithesis of the FOSS movement than those of Mr. Bill.
Stallman wants people to provide software in the way he and his flock want it provided. How people use it is irrelevant. His point is that in an open ecosystem, people can choose to use software however they like, whether it's by connecting to monolithic vertically integrated software stacks or by striking out on their own. Apple didn't provide the choice; if you wanted Apple UI, you had to buy into Apple's whole product line, because you had no other options, particularly on their mobile devices.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Not only is there wisdom in knowing precisely what to say, there is also wisdom in knowing when not to say it.
The time to make the statement is while it is relevant. You wait until the initial storm dies down, and then you start your own. And it is critical that we receive this message — not you and I, maybe, but as many of the wide-eyed legions of Apple as can be reached. Because what Apple represents is precisely the same thing that Microsoft or Sony represents: a dearth of choice. Stallman might be an egotistical ass, but he is certainly the foremost champion of the rights of the user. Some programmers don't like that, so they don't like the GPL, and they don't like Free Software. They call it a virus and they would prefer to stamp it out rather than have to deal with something so confusing.
Other people can make the same point in a month, and a year, and reach other audiences, but this point needs to be made now and it needs to be made well. Stallman has done both.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
> His statement has spurred reaction from the community; some even asking to the Free Software movement to find a new voice.
I agree with them. Furthermore, I propose that anyone making fun of Steve Jobs in a cartoon should be stoned with bricked iPhones. Don't let the Infidels smear the name of The Prophet. Inch' Apple.
lucm, indeed.
Stallman does, and always has, define freedom as that which most benefits him. He is or was a programmer and he demands the freedom to program and modify the software and devices he uses. Which is great for him.
But how can the freedom to choose not include the freedom for people to choose an Apple style 'walled garden'? I am absolutely certain that Stallman doesn't know what I want better than I do.
Further, if you don't buy any Apple products, how can you be effected by Apple? Apart from your not being able to buy a tablet that apes an ipad in countries that don't allow products to ape one another. Also other than getting angry enough to click reply on every Apple/Jobs story.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
What is it about FOSS that inspires such blind arrogance that they shoot themselves in the foot? Stallman is hurting his cause, just as a Mozilla employee recently hurt their cause -- by feeling and expressing contempt for those who don't share their vision, and by lacking respect, decency, maturity, and basic business sense.
Unfortunately it raises doubts about the competency of some FOSS organizations. If they don't have the understanding to respect other points of view, or the sense to do simple things in their own self-interest, who can rely on them?
I strongly support FOSS. It depresses me that so many leaders needlessly damage the cause.
LA Times says "some critics" but really only link to one guy, former Slashdot editor, Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier. Another one of Stallman's critics who doesn't have the balls to actually state what really bothers him about Stallman, but sleazily uses any fake controversy as an excuse to launch a discrediting smear against RMS. If you really want to know why RMS gets attacked by some of these so-called FOSS advocates, just examine RMS's other political postings on his website. It'll become apparent.
It's almost as crazy as suggesting that constitutional democracies were more free than unlimited dictatorships.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I would agree with most of the people who are upset with RMS over this if it weren't for the way in which the media overreacted to Jobs' passing. I know it's typical to focus on the positive aspects of a person's life after they die, but the media rose Steve Jobs to the level of a god. They focused on his revival of Apple while ignoring the fact that he had a big part in its original downward spiral. They exalted Jobs' focus on good design principles while ignoring the fact that he created a corporate culture of trying to sue all of the competition out of the market. They trumpeted the success of the iPhone and iPad while ignoring the walled gardens they created. It's not my place to say whether or not Jobs' presence in the market was a net positive or negative, but I think it's fair for the media to cover both sides of a person's life as long as it is done with tact.
Richard Stallman is unfortunate. Being correct but not politically correct is a tough equation.
What's Jobs guilty of? Making products that people want to buy, at prices they want to pay. Leading a company (or really a bunch of companies) that did some outstanding engineering that led to some incredible products that people really want to buy at prices that were on the high side, but people still willingly paid them. You (and the free software movement in general), with the help of the Unholy St. IGNUcius, of the Church of Emacs, are welcome to try to produce a product that people like better. However, if Emacs is any indication, I think you have a ways to go.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
I made a joke on Facebook when Steve Jobs died. Something about how God was mad at him because iPhone 4S was just a minor upgrade to iPhone 4, rather than the long-awaited iPhone 5, etc etc. Some of the flames I got were seriously crazy; one girl compared Steve Jobs dying to *her two miscarriages*. I couldn't believe it.
I'm sorry Steve Jobs is dead. Really. He was a human being, and he had hopes, dreams, feelings and ambitions just like the rest of us.
But to put Steve Jobs in the same league as people like Alan Turing, or Ada Lovelace, or Charles Babbage seems... very wrong. He was imperfect in life, like all of us, and remains imperfect in death. He was just a man. 150,000 other people I hadn't met died that day too, but nobody gave a shit about them. 150,000 people I've never met died today too. If I broke down crying and sobbing for each and every one of them, I'd be a wreck.
We as a society idolize the dead. I don't believe in extolling the virtues of the recently deceased. Given a long enough time the life expectancy of all Humans drops to 0; we all die some time, and when my time comes I would much, much rather people tell the truth about me and maybe even have a bit of a laugh, even at my expense. It's not like I'm going to care, I'll be dead.
I find it completely disrespectful that people think the best way to remember and "respect" someone who's recently died is to gloss over their flaws and essentially tell lies about how grand they were.
When I die I just want people to remember the truth about me, whatever that was, not some kind of warped 1984-ish false memory of a person who never was.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
he was a greedy businessman that ran a multi-national corporation...
Apple contracts to build a laptop in the far east for $100 using slave labor, and manipulated currencies
Then Apple Caymans, who owes no taxes of any kind, is a corp controlled by Apple USA. Apple Caymans then buys the laptop for $100 from the far east and sells it to Apple USA for $1000. The $900 profit is all profit, they pay no taxes on it.
Apple USA retails the laptop for $1100 for a $100 profit that they pay some US corporate income tax on.
So as you see, of the true $1000 profit on the laptop, they are only paying US taxes on $100 of it.
This applies to everything imported, drills, tools, electronics, everything.
This is just another reason why US based manufacturers are screwed by the world market. They have to pay full US taxes on their full profits, the other businesses don't.
it is the globalst/multi-national businesses like this that makes exorbitant profits while the USA hemorrhages jobs to third-world state owned sweatshops, they have no loyalty to anyone except making as much money as possible at the expense of everything else, even their own countrymen, fuck globalism, i hope it crashes, i would gladly do without all that "made in china" dreck to see a level playing field in the economy again
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
... is wholly good or wholly evil. Can we leave it at that?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
It's true, it's not... Just xenophobe.
(\__/) This is Lapinator
(='.'=) copy it in your sig
(")_(") so it can take over the world
"Stallman who?"
Stallman who made Linux possible. No I won't call it FNU/Linux or whatever.
Stallman who made Steve Jobs mac OS possible... Without the GPL license, and applied in a dual license, a lot of the MacOS show-offs wouldn't have been there... Have you ever hurd of Safari, just to mention one.
Still, Stallman has made is an enormous impact on planet Earth, quite possibly much larger than that of Jobs. Stallman is just the unhurd of version of Jobs, and w/o turtle-neck. The GPL (which has Linux as a subset) made it for a hurd of other free software licenses as well.
Stallman's contributions stand on their own, whether or not correct and/or not politically correct.
But how can the freedom to choose not include the freedom for people to choose an Apple style 'walled garden'?
Some "freedoms" which involve the sacrifice of a particular freedom are not permitted. For example, you are not allowed to sell yourself into slavery. Whether you think that walled gardens are heinous enough to merit such disapproval or not is a personal thing. Many persons considered slavery to be quite acceptable - for others.
Further, if you don't buy any Apple products, how can you be effected by Apple?
In much the same way as properly paid workers are affected by a slave labor force. Some occupations are thus priced out of the market, as they can't compete with subsistence-level workers (there would be openings in other occupations, such as slave driver). Becoming locked into a walled garden is generally a one-way trip, so the walled garden tends to expand to the detriment of the open market. You appear to think that this is harmless; it is not, largely due to the degree of control and squelching of competition that occurs in Apple's walled garden.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
All due respect to the deceased, and his family. But that company is/was horrible from an ethical standpoint. They say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, but they put a lot of people out of business for trivial copycatting. From the cookie shop in NY ( if I recall) being sued for making iPhone cookies, to the carpenter sued for making decorative wooden iPhone plaques. I don't know if any of those cases made it to court, but that's not the point. They sued the living hell out of anybody that even looked at them wrong without permission. Not to mention the ongoing suits against the rest of the technology world, so many lawsuits open right now I cant even recall. Jobs was a huge proponent of defending his copyrights, but he very often took it WAY to far. For example, attempting to enforce patents on touch screen gestures? Really? I actually like a lot of Apple hardware, they certainly have their place in the industry, but they will never be more than a niche marketing firm until they pull their heads out of their asses. RIP jobs, despite all his failings as a ethical human being he was a brilliant marketeer and business man. I give respect where respect is due but otherwise; while am certainly not happy that he is dead, I AM glad that there is now somebody else at the Apples helm. Hopefully Mr Cook, has a bit more common sense with the company going forward.
I've never been able to understand why these periodic "Stallman says something many people don't like" stories always involve so much strawmanning and apparent confusion. Like him or not, Stallman has been highly consistent for decades in his take on all things software freedom.
Shockingly enough, he isn't a big fan of the man who built what is perhaps the most powerful walled-garden presently in operation... I don't understand why that is a surprise...
Compare emacs with the shiny toys Jobs made and I think we see who comes out on top.
Way to cherry-pick facts to back up your bias. Compare GCC with the Lisa and see who comes out on top.
But now that I re-read your post, perhaps you were being ironic. Emacs was plainly more innovative than any of Apple's "shiny toys". Less popular, of course, but why would we nerds care about that?
You tell a kid whose parent died that you're not glad the parent is dead, but you're glad they're gone. See how well that works for you.
What Stallman needs is perspective. He lives in a world of absolutes. "They are the devils, we are the holy warriors!" logic does not apply to anything and everything, including software. There are no rights or wrongs in the way Apple, Microsoft and GNU do business/provide their services/software. They are just different in their approach. GNU, and Stallmans philosophy, could not have sold the number of machines Apple has been able to sell in the last decade, just because of the fact that a normal person in the street does not care if iPhone was scam to surround them in a walled garden. A normal person in the street wants stuff to work, and look pretty, which the iPhone did. Apple is successful because Jobs related to the general public, providing them with what they thought was cool. Nothing wrong in that. General public doesn't give a damn about deeper philosophy, about openness, and about walled gardens until they get a raid from RIAA for piracy or they get sued. In this world, you make a living not by uplifting people, but by selling people what they want and need.
Freedom doesn't mean "anything goes". Freedom means recognition of the fact that a person owns their own body, and that a person is entitled to exclusive use of his own property. All freedoms stem from those two axioms, and all tyrannies stem from the violation of those two axioms.
1. Attempt to view porn on iPhone app
Two methods:
1a. open mobile browser
1b. surf to pr0n page
--or--
1a. import favorite pr0n flicks into iTunes via one of dozens of video codec convertors
1b. view pr0n movie on iPhone
This isn't exactly rocket science, and amazingly, aside from the "import to iTunes" step, is exactly like any other phone on the planet.
Or are you just mad that you can't buy T&A in their store?
(...who the hell actually pays for the stuff these days anyway?)
-sent from my crappy Blackberry curve.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Stallman's worst defect (other than his nonconformist appearance and manner -- which are both fine by me, but not great qualities in a spokesman) is his faith in the general intelligence of the world at large.
He leaves things unsaid, because he assumes that the audience is paying proper attention, and reading between the lines.
Case in point:
Stallman's ideal vision of a world where every user is a programmer that reprograms their devices at will isn't happening for too many reasons to list
You don't need to be a programmer to program a computer. My boss isn't a programmer, yet he can program a computer simply by paying me money and telling me what to do. My mum isn't a programmer, but she can program a computer by asking me a favour. Stallman assumes people realise that.
If i think somebody is a complete tosser and Ive made my views public when asked should I change my stance when asked directly and make a liar of myself just because they are dead?
if your not going to like what you know I will say dont ask and I wont say.
Your assertion that Stallman has made the point well -- you're incorrect. That isn't intended as a value-judgment, but as an observation. You can tell by paying attention to the effects.
If your assertion is that the point needed to be made to as many of the wide-eyed legions of Apple as can be reached, then Stallman's declaration was counterproductive at this time. It's effect is going to be the closing of more minds than it opens.
I'm speaking purely from the standpoint of rhetoric or "PR tactics" here. I'm sure he felt what he was saying was true, and I'm sure many people here think so as well, but if the goal is to persuade (and not just to say something he thought was true for its own sake, or to "preach to the converted"), then it was downright counterproductive.
(Which -- and this is very important -- is not the same thing as "wrong".)
Which is not exactly an unusual thing for RMS. He is not a rhetorical genius. (Yes, he's an actual genius, I agree that's true, but not in the realm of rhetoric.)
Stallman is the anti-Jobs in many ways. But they"re both brilliant, driven, uncompromising geniuses. And to say that Stallman hasn't had as much impact on the world as Jobs is wrong on it's face, in my opinion. I reckon more devices have Linux installed than any Apple OS. How many startups would have been crushed by server OS costs without GNU/Linux as an option, even just by driving down the price of competitors? How many pieces of software that started as hobby hacking wouldn't exist with a free C compiler? App store? Linux had this years before the iPhone? Safari's engine started in KDE. Mac interface descended from X. Super-computing, internet plumbing, all dominated by Linux and GNU for a reason. Then there's Android.
If you don't like him, Stallman gives you plenty of ammunition. The same could be said about Jobs (personal emails to disgruntled users?) He spoke his mind, and a lot of people may not like what he said. In his mind, the world of software is a secret war for the freedom of billions of people. He believes proprietary software is a precursor to real live Soviet style oppression. He thinks Jobs is/was creating the world that appeared in the iconic 1984 Mac commercial. And if he believes that, blunting his words would be a disservice to history and posterity.
Steve Jobs was one to the most powerful on the planet. He's gonna have enemies. He knew that and didn't much care. I doubt his family is surfing Stallman's website looking for an epitaph.
As for the spokesman thing, I don't see RMS as that. He's the visionary. He's supposed to be unbending, uncompromising, theory based. He's not supposed to sugercoat. He's a coder, not a CEO.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
extreme censorship against FLOSS
Err... doesn't OSX contain fairly substantial amounts of FLOSS, and isn't Apple known as a reasonably responsible licensee and even contributor for most projects they use? I recall a few instances where they were accused of a license violation, but they seem to respond to most of these accusations by correcting whatever they've done wrong. Granted, not always instantly, but they do fix it.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I've never been able to understand why these periodic "Stallman says something many people don't like" stories always involve so much strawmanning and apparent confusion.
I see that as beyond obvious, if not necessarily simple: Stallman is the head of a "dangerous" (read: influential) movement which confronts people's sensibilities and challenges the status quo. A lot of people have significant personal and economic investments which are threatened by the movement that Stallman represents, and as its figurehead he must be discredited or his words must be considered and both financial empires and carefully crafted illusions designed to permit ongoing behavior harmful to society and self will disintegrate.
Shockingly enough, he isn't a big fan of the man who built what is perhaps the most powerful walled-garden presently in operation... I don't understand why that is a surprise...
Yeah, it's almost like he's interested in Software Freedom or something.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What you call a walled-garden is just a trading platform. Apple as a provider of that trading platform, controls what can be traded, but not what you in fact trade.
This is no difference to drug laws or other laws that prevent "free trade" of certain goods.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I saw a report like that too, and was about to get angry until they showed the patent for that idiotic round mouse (ie: directionless pointing device) that came out with the iMac G3's about 11~12 years ago. Some cub reporter comes across a Steve Jobs patent for a mouse, and assumes he invented the entire industry. Never mind that it was the single biggest FAIL in the history of pointing devices.
I (mostly) like Apple products, and am thankful for Jobs's contribution to the industry. But I also empathize with RMS's point of view.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Steve Jobs isn't generally well liked, perhaps people like Bill Gates like him, but that's because they actually met. Most people, just know him from the product announcements and ass kissing articles in various papers.
RMS is getting flack for it, but somebody really needs to point out at this time that he did a lot of underhanded things as well that undermined the ability of people to use their hardware as they see fit. I'm not sure who else has done as much to promote the walled garden model to the masses as Steve did.
No, The problem is that software is not in the same league as human rights and freedoms. Software choices don't kill or enslave people. Individuals developers have always had the right to publish their work any way they want regardless of any licensing. Stallman has been consistent but the problem is he has been a consistent asshole who thinks he is saving the world with his software development model. Of course he already has the financial resources that enable him to totally ignore how his theories effect those actually working for a living.
Becoming locked into a walled garden is generally a one-way trip, so the walled garden tends to expand to the detriment of the open market.
No, I have an Apple phone and an Apple laptop, my servers run BSD. I have a DVR that runs Linux. The day a non-Apple phone or laptop, or non BSD server OS, or non-Linux running DVR, becomes available that suits my needs better than what I have, I'll use them instead.
Tell me specifically how the degree of control and squelching of competition specific to Apple's walled garden affects things outside the walled garden. Tell me about something with enough scale to justify you being able to deny my freedom to choose Apple.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Do you know who makes that profit? Shareholders. Jobs paid himself $1 a year. Apple is widely-held stock, and its owners include pension funds and individual stockholders like myself. Where else do you think individual wealth comes from, pots of gold that people take from leprechauns? It is amazing to me how many people do not understand who really owns and benefits from corporate profits and growth. The purpose of a corporation is to make shareholders like me money, not to be a jobs program. I'm a small investor - and one of those "countrymen" you refer to - and I've held Apple for almost 20 years and it's made me financially secure.
I don't understand people who bitch about their jobs and being "wage slaves," then hate on those who find a way to make money outside of a paycheck, like investing in successful companies like Apple.
And of course Apple outsources it's labor. If it manufactured iPhones in California they'd cost $2500.
There shouldnt be a moderation item like flamebait. In ANY charged subject, there WILL be flaming. that is a given. forcing views to be expressed as if they do not mean what they intend to mean by allowing a moderation item like flamebait, does nothing but to discourage opinion that others may fervently oppose, rightfully, or wrongfully.
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The funny thing is, though, that Steve Jobs is not a parent to anyone here. He is a complete stranger, but has been elevated to such a messiah like stature that people that didn't even know him outside of his press releases literally went out of their way to buy fucking flowers and leave them at the Apple Store.
I think the lack of perspective most of these mourners display is the most discouraging thing. I read a few "Man, that sucks" comments and didn't have a problem, but when people call him the most important man of our time I get a little incredulous. The man made consumer goods for crying out loud, and what did he pioneer? Devices that look nice? It's bad enough when people say idiotic things like "Steve Jobs invented the personal computer/tablet/pda/smartphone/internet/{insert any modern convenience here}" but now that he's gone people are actually comparing him to Edison or Tesla in their grief. It's embarrassing to those of us with a brain.
If RMS and the FSF protested at Jobs' funeral... ... *that* would be like Fred Phelps and the scum from the Westboro Baptist Church protesting at Jobs' funeral.
The more proper question is, "Why do people think this shit is unacceptable?" Hey, it's my phone. If I choose to look at gun porn, I'll do so. If I choose to look at motorhead porn, I'll do that too. Geek porn? Got it covered. Phatbroad porn? Well - I'll take a pass on that, but it seems some guys like phat chicks. Just leave them alone, alright?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Is a walled garden better than a wide open desert? I think Stallman doesn't realize not everyone is a camel herder.
I thought Henry Ford was the best comparison, to be honest.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
The big difference is that Apple is a private entity and is controlling what can and can't be sold via a store that they own. They do not control what you can buy in other stores, as would a government.
If you dislike what is available in Apple's store or you have some philosophical disagreement with the way they do things, you are free to buy some other device.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Interesting choice of words. I'm not sure if "Mr. Bill" is a reference to Bill Gates or Mr. Bill from Saturday Night Live. Because I actually think SNL's Mr. Bill does deserve to die. Have you seen what they do to that guy? Every episode they're either running him over or chopping off some body part... they should just let him rest in peace. And in pieces, in his case.
Of course, now this makes me wonder if SNL's Mr. Bill started out as someone's sick commentary on Mr. Gates. Perhaps the creator's computer blue-screened when Office tried to load Clippy, and he started composing these skits while he waited for the reboot. "It looks like you're trying to write a letter. What you do is-- OH NOOO... I got a paper cut and it severed my arm! Oh NOOOOO...."
Jobs wasn't a great innovator in technology, but he was a pretty great salesman and marketer. One of his greatest marketing campaigns was convincing people that he was some sort of fantastic technological innovator.
His second great achievement was having a pretty plastic shell designed for a bucket of computer innards and then charging double over the nearest competing product, and actually making sales.
Third, he recognized the power of good design in both the interface and the a fore mentioned pretty plastic shell. While I've listed this third, it is probably his greatest, longest lasting, and closest to technical innovation. Apple, as a company, really gets design. It shows in every single one of their products, and often times has won out over functionality. I wish more companies got design at the same fundamental level, but integrated it better with function.
Fourth, Steve Jobs managed to get a whole generation to believe that they were thinking differently by purchasing the same computer.
RMS talks about greed and freedom. But this is the man who insists on renaming somebody else's operating system, Linux, to GNU/Linux because they used his free shit to make it. So what is it Dick, is your shit not really free? Linux owns the trademark for Linux, the and GNU is owned by your cronies.
Does that mean that if I come up with my own kernel, lets call it Assfuck, using your GNU shit, calling it GNU/Assfuck is appropriate?
Job was a visionary, zealot, and a control freak who demanded things his way. That made him a dick. But RMS is also a visionary, zealot, control freak who demands things his way as well; that makes him just as big a dick as Jobs.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
So basically, less is more and freedom is slavery.
Jobs changed after his return to Apple, it became less about enabling people and more about his vision and only his vision. Enable people as long as it's within Apple's rules, and when the rules change, you better agree with Apple.
> Err... doesn't OSX contain fairly substantial amounts of FLOSS,
If Apple were about nothing but MacOS, then you would have a point.
However, MacOS is now the minority part of Apple's business.
The problem that people have with RMS is that he points out all of the things that people would like to ingore for the sake of expediency. People don't like being exposed as foolish. People don't appreciate enlightenment. People can't handle being confronted with the things they try to hide from themselves.
Those that try to tell others how they are harming themselves tend to get set out in the desert sun.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Exactly. It's the old power vs freedom problem. Pursuing absolute freedom is stupid: when you increase someone's freedom at the expense of the freedom of someone else, you are not increasing freedom globally.
The freedom to harm others (physically or, in Stallman's view, by depriving them of the right to change the software they use) is better called "power", and that is not desirable in itself.
Ok. So now fanboys are Steve's illegitmate children.
That's a great rhetorical corner you've painted yourself into there.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Stallman was just voicing his long and honestly held beliefs that a free and open software environment is a major benefit to society, and that closed systems such as promulgated by Jobs is not in people's best interests, but is only in the best interest of those who own the system - Jobs/Apple in this case. Yes, Jobs was a brilliant visionary and executor of his vision, but that vision was to limit people's choices to those he approved of. If our government were to do that (oops, they must have read his book) we would be up in arms...
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
But how can the freedom to choose not include the freedom for people to choose an Apple style 'walled garden'? I am absolutely certain that Stallman doesn't know what I want better than I do.
I don't believe Stallman would dispute your freedom to make that choice.
He would just regret that you have done so.
He would also contend that most people sleepwalk into that choice without knowing the ins and outs of the factors.
That is interesting. In 100 years surely some older versions of GPLed software will be in the public domain?
which is totally what she said
OSX is built on a BSD variant, and to my best knowledge Apple did not violate the license terms. But they were not all that eager to contribute to the further develoment of BSD. Apple offered some of its OSX code for download, but never all of it. And the available part dwindled over the years.
For instance, several years ago when Linux drivers for ATI were in a deplorable state, Apple was offering the ATI 9600 series and obviously had OS X drivers for them. Out of curiosity, I looked at the Apple website if those drivers were available as Open Source. Might have been worthwhile to port them over - but I found nothing.
Behavior like that is the reason the GPL exists. Some people will just leech but not share, unless you add a bit of pressure ;-)
C - the footgun of programming languages
Actually, Apple has no problem accepting GPL software either on the iOS App Store or the MacOS X App Store. However, the VLC port for the iPhone was removed by Apple, because one of the copyright holder threatened to sue Apple.
The store terms are quite clear: If any software provides its own license (like the GPL license), then the customer receives it with that license. Apple _also_ requires that any customer has the right to the minimum license terms provided by Apple, like installing the same software on all Macs you own for private use. And a slight problem is that on the App Store, payment is _for the license_, not for the software, and since GPL doesn't allow charging _for the license_, GPL licensed software on the App Store must be free (as in beer).
Bad for who? The developers who make over 17x more money on the Apple app store than the Google app market (which has also pulled apps such as emulators etc.)
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/21/861-5-percent-growth-android-puny/
Just maybe, people prefer Apple's approach to Google's....
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Edison was also a patent troll who primarily repackaged things that others were doing the grunt technical work on. Seems fairly apt to me.
I wish people didn't eat at McDonald's, or drink Starbucks coffee, but I prefer to live in a world where choices that seem suboptimal to me are possible for other people to make.
Mainly because I know the choice police would eventually get around to taking away something I like.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
FWIW, I own a MacBook Air and an iPhone 3GS.
People who view Apple as an enabler of freedom are those who think the same thing of their EZpass for road tolls. Someday, they will see their "internal passport" as an enabler of travel.
The fact is, that the "1984" campaign was a propaganda ruse. Jobs and Hertzfeld and crew were already working with DARPA and the spooks.
Read all of the following - including the links - and understand that it is no exaggeration to understand that with the introduction of "Siri", George Orwell's "Telescreen" is on the verge of reality - in your pocket.
http://cryptogon.com/?p=25289
http://venturebeat.com/2008/10/13/shadowy-government-project-spins-off-siri-to-help-direct-your-affairs/
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
When working for wages, in theory, you have the freedom to quit one job and pursue another, freedom from emotional or physical abuse from your employer (at the very least by exercising your right to quit), and you can negotiate for better treatment - fewer work hours, better pay, better benefits, nicer working environment. You cannot do any of those things as a slave.
It is true that RMS serves an important role as a vocal advocate. The trouble is that he has little political or social grace. For example, his description of Steve Jobs - "Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom".
If you're trying to convince people, you need to avoid out-right insulting them and mocking them. The kind of sentiment expressed above can be loved by people of a similar outlook, but for anyone else, the harsh, mightier-than-thou attitude is a huge turnoff.
The trouble isn't his message, it is how he tries to deliver it. For most people, who don't have a technical background, he just comes across as a crazy, ranting lunatic, which probably hurts his cause more than it helps.
To make linux really take off, there needs to be someone with the charisma and vision of Steve Jobs, with the philosophical ideals of Stallman. Now *that* would be great.
But to put Steve Jobs in the same league as people like Alan Turing, or Ada Lovelace, or Charles Babbage seems... very wrong.
Why? You don't know any more about Turing, Lovelace or Babbage than you do about Jobs. You're engaging in the same sort of hero worship you seem to be railing against. All of them did important work on different pieces of the technology puzzle. You might be more interested in the work of Turing (which is fine) but that doesn't make him more or less worthy of admiration. Jobs couldn't do what Turing did and Turing couldn't have done what Jobs did. Most of us only have the vaguest third-person idea of what sort of people they were so we can only really judge them by their works.
I'm probably going to get flamed for this but at the time linux started the GNU stuff was mostly just free rewrites of the tools that came with SunOS. It also wasn't the only free software available at the time. The GPL licence was impressive but with linux we can't really give RMS credit for more than inspiration about how to share the thing. Comparing hurd or emacs and linux you can see a major contrast between a tightly closed group that is very hard to enter and a more collaborative project. As shown with the attempted ownership of the name with the silly LiGnuX and gnu/linux renaming it is just reflected glory, which is pathetic really because GNU have had some major achievements of their own they should have been shouting about (eg. gcc is far more impressive now than it was).
It's essentially different on all the points I made. I really can't see how that's unclear. Having the freedom to walk away from the situation at any time negates all of the issues I posed with slavery.
Or to answer your other question, it can be claimed that the government's purpose is not to protect people from their own poor decisions, but instead to protect them from being forced into those poor decisions by their lack of power, which is what actually happens in nearly every case. The idea of the 'poor decision maker' is a strawman, which is perhaps the essential point you are missing. Yes, there are a few people who tend to poor decisions, but most of the poor decisions that you're thinking of are ones made under duress, not due to stupidity.
And furthermore, while there can be a separate debate about the rightness of government provided education, so long as government provided education is in fact the norm, the government clearly bears responsibility if they educate you so poorly you cannot make effective decisions.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
The one trolling was Stallman. He was, , ""I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone."
So, a massive cerebral hemorrhage, a bullet to the head that left him a vegetable, a mental degenerate disease, or even something that just left him physically too debilitated to continue to do his, job, would have been fine with Stallman. Read the entirety of what he wrote, and you'll see that there's no other interpretation.
Stallman is no longer relevant, and his latest whining just underlines that.
Indeed. Steve Jobs used to make blue boxes to steal from the phone company. Not 'steal' in quotes, actual theft of service. Using actual long distance lines without paying for them.
A lot of people did it for fun, which is somewhat reasonable, I guess. It's one thing to hack on the phone system for fun. I can shrug at that.
But Jobs actually manufactured blue boxes and sold them to others, people less interested in 'phone hacking' and more interested in 'free long distance calls'. Well, Woz built them and Jobs packaged and sold them. That was his first 'user interface', making blue boxes usable and affordable for random non-hacker people. Probably with nice curved corners and a shuffle version that didn't allow you to pick the number to dial. ;)
I.e., he was the equivalent of a hacker selling script kiddie tools.
And, years later, Steve Jobs also sold fucking phones that people couldn't install whatever software they wanted on them. Not even something illegal, not something harmful, just people who wanted to play ScummVM games or whatever on their phone.
I don't know exactly what happened in the years between those two Steve Jobs, but I'd also be glad he was gone from Apple if I suspected he was the cause of the walled garden in iPhones. (However, I have actually no evidence this is the case, and I'm not sure why RMS thinks it is. And he was pretty much 'gone from Apple' already from what I understand.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
After all, a smartphone uses the closed cell phone networks, and forget Android, because the Linux kernel's GPLv-only licensing is (according to the FSF) a risk.
Nope - the GNU/HURD.phone would be as big as a fridge (not counting the 60-foot antenna), because it would have to combine the abilities of a phone with the ability to act as it's own cell tower, so you can talk to the 2 others who use GNU/HURDphones. And its command interface would be EMACS.
Didn't you watch the latest keynote? Apple has 5% of the overall cellphone market. What are you talking about????
All your rant is prefectly legitimate whenever a company is in a position of monopoly. UIS law has provisions for this. Your rant is just not applicable to Apple.
Double standard my ass. Check your facts. People like iOS. Others like Android. Some like WP7. So what? Some are stupider than others? Give people some credit.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
walled-gardens are bad ideas anyway.
Even my 10 year old know that you can say "I don't like it" lightly, but "it is bad" must be really weighted before proclaimed. Fact is, many people like it. So, is it really that bad?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
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06 October 2011 (Steve Jobs)
Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.
As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.
Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective.
That was a incredibly poorly thought remark. The FOSS movement is a political movement as much as a technological movement. In politics, what you say and how you say it matters. FOSS already have the drawback that is composed mostly from nerds lacking social skills, to have the most visible mouthpiece of the movement expressing himself so poorly is another unnecessary obstacle. He could have said:
"Despite his death and economical success, I still believe that the vision of Steve Jobs in computing is a menace to fundamental freedoms now an in the future. I have sympathy for his family in this moments of loss, but I can't ignore the dangerous effects of his work."
Instead, what he wrote is more akin a what a teen would post to twitter after doing a tantrum. It is simply too low for the man that wrote the GPL and "The right to read".
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
xerox actually invented both the mouse
Umm, no; that was Doug Engelbart at Stanford Research Institute.
What I did is a tradeoff, as I said. I chose to delegate some of my work to Apple, nothing else. Because frankly, I already maintain 7 machines at home, a few servers in the cloud, so I don't have time to maintain a fleet of ipads, ipods and iphones.
Of course, by delegating, I let Apple decide which apps are good for me. But if you're not a complete Jackass, you'll admit that they pretty much let everything in (there was exceptions) unless it's really buggy, porn or offensive. If I want those things, I have 7 PCs at home. I'm not really restricted as you guys put it.
So yes, my free time is restricted because I have three kids and I'd rather play with them than reinstall all my Android fleet with the latest CyanogenMod. That's my choice and I sincerely fuck you for not respecting it. And looking at the words you chose to capitalize, it looks like we're both getting the same deal, so you can take your superior attitude and shove it up your tight ass up to your throat.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
I'm sure Stallman would have preferred if Jobs didn't die or get debilitated in those ways and instead would have started living up to his stated ideals of openness, creativity, and competition.
Steve Jobs hasn't done anything relevant since NeXT either, and that was almost 20 years ago too. Technologically relevant that is.
iTunes: Not his - bought from someone else and had an "OSX" gui slapped onto it.
iPod: Again, not his, the tech (including patents) was bought from another company and put into an Apple case.
Repeat ad naseum for basically everything since he returned to Apple.
The man was a genius marketer, period. He was excellent at marketing these products as the talking head of Apple. This is why Apple survived though, because he was smart enough to see where there was consumer demand and a lack of "premium" status products to fill that demand.
At the time, we had relatively crappy MP3 players using AA batteries and small storage space, we had to rely on Sony for the high-end laptop market (UGH), and we had our choice of Windows, Windows, or...Windows (no, Linux was not a choice, it was essentially worthless on the desktop at the time).
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
People buy politicians left right and center.
The problem is that politicians have something marketable, that can be bought. The problem is that politicians have goods for sale, and these goods shouldn't be in politicians' hands.
These goods - all of the regulative activity, taxes, subsidies, these goods make politicians an excellent return on investment, and anybody who wants to grow their business by special treatment, by destroying competition via special licensing, that provides only the buyer with ability to operate, gov't contracts and franchises, the free money that is flowing out of the Federal reserve - all of this should not be possible.
50% of people on the bottom of income do not pay income taxes.
The people who actually produce stuff, actually create jobs, they are the people who create that wealth that taxes are paid from.
Steve Jobs did MORE for society and economy than ANY politician or charity, because he increased the WEALTH of the economy by building products people wanted and his company provided employment and products.
Real wealth is created not in government halls by politicians, real wealth is always created privately, by people who build products. Gov't is there to confiscate the wealth and distribute it according to its desires, that's all, and it buys the votes with free cheese offerings to the bottom income earners.
You can't handle the truth.
Invariably, if there is a way to screw up your phone, my users will do, because they'll stumble on a website giving instructions on how to put this "marvelous" app on their phone.
Ah, so you're responsible for some people who you presumably have no real authority over, but you're allowed to choose their technology for them.
Why not allow your users to do what they want after promising (in writing) not to bother you about it? Some users get hand-held, some get to do what they want. Or why not simply factory-reset their phones if they screw them up?
Or, if you must lock them down, is it really the case that Android provides no such security here? After all, these are presumably the same people who, if not you, then some IT department somewhere lets them use PCs. Surely, then, even if it's by locking it down yourself, an open platform is manageable.
Ways to jailbreak your phone are security issues, nothing less, nothing more. Can you blame Apple from closing security vulnerabilities?
Nope, but I can blame them for setting up a situation in which a security vulnerability is what's required to "jailbreak" (read: liberate) my own device.
Where I live, every single Android phone has to be rootkitted in order to reinstall another kernel.
And where is that, exactly?
Motorola, among others, has pledged to ship unlocked bootloaders on new phones. You plug the phone in, run one command from the dev kit on a PC -- which will even work from a Linux PC -- to install an entire new copy of the OS.
Also, since when were we talking about kernels? I was talking about additional software. On iPhone, you have to jailbreak just to download an app that isn't from Apple's own app store. Not all Android devices require even the procedure I described above -- some allow you to download apps from a web browser the way PCs (and Macs) have for, well, forever. So, on some brand-new Android phones, I can take the phone out of the box, navigate to a competitor's app store website, and I'm good -- at worst, I download their app store client.
And for god's sake, Apple doesn't force anyone to do anything!!!! Nobody prevents anyone from using Android...
That's a bit like an abusive husband telling his battered wife that she didn't have to marry him. Yes, it's true that Apple can't stop me from buying Android, and no one was suggesting that they can. However, if I were to buy Apple, then I'd have these restrictions.
Furthermore, the more people who buy Apple, the more of a market there is for iOS apps, and the less of a market there is for Android apps. This affects me as a developer -- I don't want to be forced to publish through Apple, to submit every patch to their capricious review process. And before you say "Nobody is forced to..." Sure, it's not the case yet, but the smaller the iOS market, the more opportunities there will be for me to find employment, or for me to sell a solo killer app, to non-iOS platforms.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!