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posted by takyon on Friday September 28 2018, @10:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the latent-killswitch dept.

Happy 35th Birthday GNU!

The GNU project was officially announced on 27 September 1983 by Richard Stallman. Thirty-five years of a project that has now become the fundamental building block of everything we use and see in technology in 2018. I would not be wrong to say that there isn't a single proprietary piece of software that anyone is still using from 35 years ago – please post comments if there is something still being used.

There is only one reason for this longevity: the GNU project was built upon the premise that the code is available to anyone, anywhere with the only restriction that whatever is done to the code, it shall always be available to anyone, forever. Richard Stallman's genius in crafting the copyleft license that is the GNU General Public License is probably the best hack of the 20th century software industry.

Extra: Happy Birthday, GNU: Why I still love GNU 35 years later


Original Submission #1   Original Submission #2

Related Stories

The Four Freedoms and The One Obligation of Free Software 25 comments

Educator Lionel Dricot explores the historical prescience of Richard Stallman's (RMS) warnings and prophecies which have been spot on since the beginning, including his proposed solutions. Dricot points out that the problem with acceptance of the solutions is not with RMS or the Free Software Foundation (FSF), instead the problem is us and that we didn't listen. In addition to the Four Freedoms, he points out one obligation which has been taken for granted and left unspoken until now: the obligation to prevent privatization of the Commons.

There was one weakness in RMS theory: copyleft was not part of the four freedoms he theorised. Business-compatible licenses like BSD/MIT or even public domain are "Free Software" because they respect the four freedoms.

But they can be privatised.

And that's the whole point. For the last 30 years, businesses and proponents of Open Source, including Linus Torvalds, have been decrying the GPL because of the essential right of "doing business" aka "privatising the common".

They succeeded so much that the essential mission of the FSF to guarantee the common was seen as "useless" or, worse, "reactionary". What was the work of the FSF? The most important thing is that they proof-bombed the GPL against weaknesses found later. They literally patched vulnerabilities. First the GPLv3, to fight "Tivoisation" and then AGPL, to counteract proprietary online services running on free software but taking away freedom of users.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @10:07AM (36 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @10:07AM (#741260)

    How is GNU Hurd? Can the FSF and GNU projects create a freedom preserving covenant to protect against authoritarianism and the ever more pervasive CoC of death?

    • (Score: 3, Redundant) by RandomFactor on Friday September 28 2018, @10:42AM (35 children)

      by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 28 2018, @10:42AM (#741267) Journal

      Unfortunately interest in things like BSD and GNU's Mach kernel hurd pretty much lost interest as Linux took over the world

      While we had a benevolent meritocratic (if crass) dictator of Linux kernel development that was dandy.
      (interestingly a dictatorship is both potentially the best and potentially the worst form of government)

      It appears that Kernel development just got .woke. and the best code will no longer be the prime consideration.

      This will have multiple effects.

      1) there's a real potential for disruption completely halting forward progress if people de license their code as part of the kernel
      2) progress will be slower and code will be less optimal goi ng forward as high quality kernel coders are lost or contributions are considered on non-merit criteria
      3) I wouldn't be surprised to see the kernel move to GPL3
      4) encroachment of Free options into spaces held by proprietary platforms will stall or reverse

      Coding has been a place where all the masks and social prejudices never really mattered. Now we are taking that away from the one place where success was available in a truly equal fashion regardless of your social state. All because Linus has been a foul mouthed asshole.

      --
      В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @11:00AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @11:00AM (#741270)

        All because Linus has been a foul mouthed asshole.

        Linus has as much right to be a "foul mouthed asshole" as Stallman has to be a "cantankerous, smelly commie". That's what it means to live in a free society, the GPL subverted the authoritarian control of corporate copyright to promote freedom. It's time to rethink it in light of creeping authoritarianism under the false banner of "social justice".

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday September 28 2018, @02:53PM

          by Thexalon (636) on Friday September 28 2018, @02:53PM (#741350)

          Linus has the right to be a foul-mouthed asshole. That doesn't mean that being a foul-mouthed asshole is good for Linux or good for Linus. By all appearances at least, nobody forced Linus to take a step back from Linux, nor did anyone say "stop being a foul-mouthed asshole or you'll be off Linux forever" or something, he decided to do both of those things on his own accord. I mean, perhaps something happened with Tove that Linus doesn't want to make public or something, but that's not coercion unless she threatened to use her mad karate skills on him or something.

          In short, he made a choice. Why are you worried about "creeping authoritarianism" over something somebody did voluntarily?

          --
          The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by stormwyrm on Friday September 28 2018, @11:10AM (4 children)

        by stormwyrm (717) on Friday September 28 2018, @11:10AM (#741272) Journal

        3) I wouldn't be surprised to see the kernel move to GPL3

        Gee, you say that as though it were a bad thing. But even though I'm not really against this happening, it probably will never happen. Since Linus Torvalds has never insisted on copyright assignments for code contributions to Linux so all such contributions are still copyright whoever contributed them. These many copyright holders must all agree on a sweeping licensing change such as that, and I seriously doubt that any movement will get them all to agree. If even one code contributor refuses or cannot be contacted, any such attempt has difficulties in proportion to the significance and complexity of the contributions they hold. It will become necessary to excise all of the code of the holdouts and replace them with equivalents that can be proven in a court of law to not be derivative of the original code, or else anyone distributing the kernel under new license becomes guilty of copyright infringement against the holdouts. GPLv2 vs. GPLv3 has been a divisive topic ever since the new license came out, and there will be certain to be many contributors of significant portions of the kernel who will refuse any such attempts to change the license. Given the kind of waste of effort that this would entail, I don't think even Richard Stallman would agree to such attempts to change the license of the Linux kernel. The FSF is nothing if not pragmatic, and the GPLv2, while not ideal for them, still helps advance their cause.

        --
        Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
        • (Score: 0, Troll) by VLM on Friday September 28 2018, @11:57AM (1 child)

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 28 2018, @11:57AM (#741285)

          It will become necessary to excise all of the code of the holdouts and replace them with equivalents that can be proven in a court of law to not be derivative of the original code

          You say that like its a problem, but we're dealing with people who care a lot more about the author of the code being a sassy black woman than they care about the code actually working or security in general or memory leaks or priv escalation attacks. In fact the NSA would love to fund it as long as it results in more useful zero-day exploits. A kernel written entirely by gay trans non-white non-asian women is a win to those people regardless if it works or not and regardless if anyone uses it or not. What matters is white males can't have associate with each other or have a "safe space".

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @05:31PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @05:31PM (#741435)

            muh uppreshun!!! they are tryin to mahk me talk guhd!

            oh noes my neo nazi friends might think i got cucked

        • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday September 28 2018, @04:51PM

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday September 28 2018, @04:51PM (#741413) Journal

          These many copyright holders must all agree on a sweeping licensing change such as that, and I seriously doubt that any movement will get them all to agree.

          Actually it's not as if all developers must agree at once to it. There can be lobbying to add the "or later" (or even just a more restrictive "or 3") clause to the license of individual code snippets; such code snippets continue to be license compatible with code only under GPL version 2. Then when a critical mass is reached, an effort can be started to replace the code of people who don't want to add the version 3 disclaimer. As soon as all code has the "or later" or "or 3" clause, it can be easily switched to GPLv3.

          Indeed, should it actually happen that people withdraw their license due to CoC issues, it might even speed up such a transition project, because then that code has to be written anew anyway, so the "or later" provision can be added to all that new code immediately.

          --
          The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
        • (Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Friday September 28 2018, @11:03PM

          by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 28 2018, @11:03PM (#741589) Journal

          Gee, you say that as though it were a bad thing

          I was trying to present the outcomes neutrally, although i was initially listed negative ones only, maybe some of that tone still crept in.

          Didn't mean it as good or bad, but as something we might reasonably see come about as a result of the kernel getting torn up by code withdrawals. If that occurs I could easily see a push to move to the next version GPL that doesn't allow that type of behavior.

          I was typing in a rush as it was time to head to work :-)

          --
          В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Friday September 28 2018, @11:45AM (5 children)

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 28 2018, @11:45AM (#741281)

        the best code will no longer be the prime consideration

        systemd?

        Not that there's anything wrong with the BSDs. FreeBSD is all the good parts of Linux without the bad parts.

        All because Linus has been a foul mouthed asshole.

        Given that his every utterance has been scrutinized like a supreme court appointment for a quarter century, I'm not sure a cherry picking expedition necessarily proves anything. Compared to, say, Jewish comedians on TV, he's actually not that foulmouthed, I've certainly heard worse. I mean, when someone sounds more laid back than Sarah Silverman, doesn't that make it inherently anti-Semitic to criticize Linus?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @05:39PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @05:39PM (#741442)

          Otherwise, FreeBSD wouldn't have known better, and wouldn't know which good parts to steal instead.

          There are 2 kinds of Operating Systems: Those people bitch about, and those nobody uses.

        • (Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Friday September 28 2018, @10:58PM (3 children)

          by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 28 2018, @10:58PM (#741585) Journal

          , doesn't that make it inherently anti-Semitic to criticize Linus?

            1) Linus is Jewish? If I had been asked I would have guessed vaguely Christian, but I never looked for that info either. That whole line of thought on your part is offbase hypersensitive BS.
            2) Regardless, I probably should have phrased the last sentence differently, it wasn't intended as a criticism of Linus, it was meant as a criticism of this (his abrasive style/language/personality) being the catalyst for this change and all its ramifications.

          --
          В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @08:17AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @08:17AM (#741744)

            1) Linus is Jewish?

            No, ethnically Swedish but a Finn, if I recall correctly. So probably Some Kind of Lutheran, possibly a Papist, maybe a new age Crystal worshipper, or a modern human who is an atheist. VLM is just exercising his inner Nazi a bit more. With proper exercise, he will be just as much as a bigot as Ethanol_fueled, but not nearly as amusing. VLM need to go recode his own kernel, a pure kernel, one kernel to seek them all, one kernel to find them, one kernel to bring them all, and in the systemd bind them!

          • (Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday September 29 2018, @11:51PM (1 child)

            by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Saturday September 29 2018, @11:51PM (#741954)

            Less abrasive than Sarah Silverman so calling for him to be punished is essentially calling out (some) jews for being much worse....

            • (Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Sunday September 30 2018, @03:36AM

              by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Sunday September 30 2018, @03:36AM (#741989) Journal

              RIF

              --
              В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 28 2018, @12:14PM (4 children)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Friday September 28 2018, @12:14PM (#741292) Homepage Journal

        Or this was all a setup by Linus to show everyone why Linux had the Code of Conflict in the first place. Probably not but I'll laugh my ass off if it turns out that way.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @12:40PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @12:40PM (#741305)

          Unfortunately not. [bbc.co.uk] I find his reasoning paper thin, he doesn't want to be falsely associated with shitheads [wikipedia.org] but doesn't identify those who would make false accusations as the problem?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @05:35PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @05:35PM (#741440)

          The really telling part is how the most toxic users on SN are the ones crying the hardest. What ever happened to personal responsibility? Can't handle the consequences of being rude to other people?

          I guess we'll have to wait and see how many OSS contributors get blackballed through the CoC. My bet is on this being a non-issue.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @07:40PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @07:40PM (#741504)

            Can't handle the consequences of being rude to other people?

            No, can't stand blatant liars faking offense at self-invented "insults". IOW, the ones who behave just like you.

      • (Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Friday September 28 2018, @12:29PM (12 children)

        by pTamok (3042) on Friday September 28 2018, @12:29PM (#741300)

        Unfortunately interest in things like BSD and GNU's Mach kernel hurd pretty much lost interest as Linux took over the world

        Interest can be rekindled.

        The hard bit is separating politics from an engineering project. Unfortunately, wherever there are humans, there is politics, and the result is usually that people who are better at politics than at engineering get the power. I am not aware of any successful means of insulating scientific and engineering projects from political influence - if there were one, I expect it would be insanely popular.

        The problem that engineers have is that they frequently approach political problems as though they were engineering problems, then get mystified when standard problem solving approaches don't work. People who excel at both are vanishingly rare. I know I do not have such skill, but at least I am self-aware enough to know that, and aim to avoid getting into political deep water. I don't succeed in that, as I have drowned in office politics more than once.

        You only need to look at the stereotypes satirised in Dilbert: Dilbert is a knowledgeable engineer, but the technically clueless Pointy Haired Boss is still the Boss. It is a stereotype, but stereotypes often contain a kernel of truth (or maybe truthiness ;-))

        4.19-rc3 could become a turning point*. We'll see.

        *Linus' announcement of 4.19-rc4 was after after the actual the commit of 4.19-rc4, which was after the commit of the new Code of Conduct.

        Timeline:
          - at 2018-09-16 11:42:28 -0700 the CoC commit is here [kernel.org] ;
          - at 2018-09-16 11:52:37 -0700 the actual 4.19-rc4 commit is here [kernel.org]
          - at 2018-09-16 12:22:43 -0700 Linus' announcement is here [lkml.org]

        • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @12:48PM (8 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @12:48PM (#741309)

          I am not aware of any successful means of insulating scientific and engineering projects from political influence - if there were one, I expect it would be insanely popular.

          It's not possible to prevent interpersonal or political squabbles. Amending the GPL to prevent takeover of projects by individuals demanding adherence to some political dogma may be possible. If a way were to be found, all the hatred thrown at the GPL back in the day would reemerge and the same people would be behind it. The objective of the enemy is excerting control over others by disempowering them and the mechanism (closed source, imposition of CoC) doesn't matter.

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday September 28 2018, @03:18PM (7 children)

            by Thexalon (636) on Friday September 28 2018, @03:18PM (#741367)

            Amending the GPL to prevent takeover of projects by individuals demanding adherence to some political dogma may be possible.

            How exactly does amending a legal agreement regarding the distribution of source code with compiled code have jack squat to do with efforts to establish code of conduct? The code of conduct affects the organization creating code, not the code itself.

            Under the current rules, there's a mechanism for dealing with any organizational move from the people creating code that you don't like: Build your own version. (With blackjack! And hookers!) For instance, you could fork Linux right now. And as the BDFL, you could decide what gets included in your fork completely arbitrarily, and also make the promise of no Codes of Conduct ever. And what's more, you could even pull in any changes from Linux into your fork you wanted to, since they're both GPL'd.

            But instead of doing that, what you'd like to do is use copyright law (a.k.a. government intervention) to force organizations you're probably not even a part of to conduct their internal affairs according to your own views about what is and is not acceptable. Not what Congress said, not what the EEOC said, not what those organization's leaders/boards/members said, but what you said. Now I want you to re-read this sentence:

            The objective of the enemy is exerting control over others by disempowering them and the mechanism (closed source, imposition of CoC) doesn't matter.

            How exactly are you different from "the enemy"?

            --
            The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @04:32PM (6 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @04:32PM (#741403)

              The code of conduct affects the organization creating code, not the code itself.

              /* Attention CoC Suckers.
              * If the government were limiting expression in this way
              * we'd be discussing prior restraint
              */

              For instance, you could fork Linux right now.

              Correct but no one person could maintain it. The GPL turned copyright against itself to ensure the code would be free and I suggested the same freedoms should be preserved for those writing code. Why is it important? It's important because millennials take freedoms for granted, they don't appreciate how hard won they were.

              • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday September 28 2018, @05:05PM (5 children)

                by Thexalon (636) on Friday September 28 2018, @05:05PM (#741423)

                Correct but no one person could maintain it.

                Sure they could. I even demonstrated how. To put it more specifically, your simplest approach to maintaining it on your own looks something like this:

                $ git remote add $LINUX_MAIN_GIT_URL upstream
                $ git pull upstream

                Done. You now have any changes done by all those Linux nannies with their annoying CoC, and you also have any changes you did without being subject to a CoC. And of course you can also try to convince other developers to contribute to your OS rather than Linux, in which case you aren't working on your own anymore. And I should also point out that since your stuff would have to be GPL'd, in the event that it's technically superior you may find your stuff pulled into Linux as well.

                As for the rest of your argument: Freedom means that the Linux Foundation can adopt whatever non-illegal rules they want for how they conduct their activities. Your freedom is to walk away if you don't like those rules. This is no different from your boss saying you aren't allowed to tell customers to go f*** themselves no matter how much you want to, and if you don't like it you can find yourself another job.

                --
                The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @06:10PM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @06:10PM (#741453)

                  This is no different from your printer manufacturer saying you aren't allowed to fix problems yourself no matter how much you want to, and if you don't like it you can buy another printer.

                  A slight change to your analogy reveals the problem.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @07:24PM (3 children)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @07:24PM (#741492)

                  You now have any changes done by all those Linux nannies with their annoying CoC, and you also have any changes you did without being subject to a CoC.

                  Please get off your magic unicorn and do remember the sizable amount of work that Gentoo, Slackware, Devuan etc. teams now have to do to unfuck the parts of system deliberately twisted to "require" a systemd infestation.
                  People with an agenda having a free run at the kernel itself, can of course inflict even more and harder-to-counter architectural damage on the OS.

                  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday September 28 2018, @08:18PM (1 child)

                    by Thexalon (636) on Friday September 28 2018, @08:18PM (#741521)

                    Please get off your magic unicorn and do remember the sizable amount of work that Gentoo, Slackware, Devuan etc. teams now have to do to unfuck the parts of system deliberately twisted to "require" a systemd infestation.

                    1. It's entirely possible to use an unpatched vanilla Linux kernel without systemd. If you compile your own kernel, the help sections for the relevant options will even helpfully point out exactly what you can turn off to make systemd impossible to run on your system, but the system will run just fine on sysvinit or upstart or openRC with those options enabled. The work you're referring to is in userspace (e.g. undoing the reliance of key system utilities on systemd's crappy binary logging system), not the kernel. So from a technical standpoint, you do not appear to have the slightest clue what you're talking about.

                    2. Even if that were completely true, you'd still have the right and the ability to fork the kernel. My simple "pull in whatever happens to the mainline kernel" is just one way of handling the maintenance if you're understaffed. You could, of course, pull in the mainline kernel to a branch, evaluate and/or eliminate the patchset to your heart's content, and keep only what you like.

                    From your statements, I think it's safe to assume that you are not a kernel contributor, and thus not affected by any kernel contributor code of conduct in any way whatsoever. You are unwilling to fork off the code now before any "more and harder-to-counter architectural damage" occurs, and are unwilling to create your own version of the OS that is presumably without this architectural damage because it's too much work. I'm going to suggest that your concerns have nothing at all to technical issues and everything to do with the fear that your chosen hobby or profession isn't a place where you can do whatever you want.

                    --
                    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
                    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @09:11PM

                      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @09:11PM (#741548)

                      When I say "system" and you bloviate about kernel it's disingenuous at best. From a technical standpoint.

                      But when you start telling me how I'm "not affected" by how and by whom the kernel of the OS that I run is made - you get firmly into the realm of the crazy. Go tell Windows users they're "not affected" by the consequences of architectural decisions within MS.

                      Please do not insult anyone's intelligence here with such ham-fisted rhetoric. Thanks.

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @12:52PM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @12:52PM (#741775)

                    I still don't really understand why the desktop really needs the init system as a dependency. Why should it care?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @03:40PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @03:40PM (#741377)

          > I am not aware of any successful means of insulating scientific and engineering projects from political influence...

          On a small scale there is someone called "a good boss". The definition of a good boss (or group leader) is a politically savvy & empowered person with enough understanding of the engineering process to isolate one from the other. I've worked for some good ones and strive to do the same now that I'm a manager (but in my case I only manage one highly productive engineer).

          One of the best I worked for was in the heydays of the arcade game business. In a company where the normal product cycle took about 6 months, he managed to get three years of development time for a "game changing"(sorry) new way of developing the hardware and software for arcade games. This manager had come off a very successful project (so he had cred with the company top managers). He challenged his group of 4 engineers with the new approach, finding budget and resources so they could keep working, while he attended all the hand-wringing meetings and dealt with the normal corporate in-fighting. Only near the end of the development did the group pull in resources from the rest of the company (cabinet design, testing, marketing, etc) to complete the product. It all worked out and was a big money maker.

        • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday September 28 2018, @04:54PM (1 child)

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday September 28 2018, @04:54PM (#741415) Journal

          I am not aware of any successful means of insulating scientific and engineering projects from political influence

          Well, that's easy: Just make sure the project is done by a single person, and has no success whatsoever.

          --
          The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
          • (Score: 3, Funny) by chromas on Friday September 28 2018, @05:34PM

            by chromas (34) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 28 2018, @05:34PM (#741439) Journal

            TempleOS by Terry A. Davis. The CIA niggers finally got him.

      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 28 2018, @02:34PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 28 2018, @02:34PM (#741338) Journal

        While Linux will be around for a very long time, I think, Linux is showing its age.

        Linux will be around for a very long time for the same reason as Java, or COBOL, or even Windows. The economic value of the code created for it is so huge that it simply won't disappear overnight. Something can have huge economic value despite its warts.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 4, Informative) by jelizondo on Friday September 28 2018, @04:37PM (2 children)

        by jelizondo (653) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 28 2018, @04:37PM (#741406) Journal

        An interesting piece on Linus Torvalds [bbc.com] on the BBC published today, talking about the CoC, which Linus thinks is way too much. A good read.

        • (Score: 2) by EETech1 on Saturday September 29 2018, @04:06AM (1 child)

          by EETech1 (957) on Saturday September 29 2018, @04:06AM (#741678)

          It would be the ultimate, if he came back, and forked it.
          Probably taking vacation to set up the new infrastructure.

          Get back, and send a message to the old list...

          We'll be over here! Come on by!

          • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @12:56PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @12:56PM (#741776)

            You mean like Git?
            "I can't see viable options. I'll just make my own. Who's with me?"

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 28 2018, @10:13AM (3 children)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday September 28 2018, @10:13AM (#741262) Journal

    I really admire Stallman, Linus, ESR, and the many, many FLOSS creators out there. It's a fine legacy to have created something that has changed the world, and to have changed it without sullying it with a profit motive.

    Stallman has a certain reputation as an individual, but his achievement is epic.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @10:34AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @10:34AM (#741265)

      Fortune: No yak too dirty; no dumpster too hollow.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 28 2018, @12:14PM

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Friday September 28 2018, @12:14PM (#741293) Homepage Journal

      Yeah, he's a dirty hippie but he's our dirty hippie.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 2) by Pav on Friday September 28 2018, @09:28PM

      by Pav (114) on Friday September 28 2018, @09:28PM (#741553)

      Not sure about ESR - the Halloween Documents triggered the movements collective lizard-brain, and it suddently became about defeating Microsoft rather than making world of I.T a place where individuals (both users and coders) and NOT companies had the power. It was around this time that Google, Amazon etc... were founded, and they became the avatars to un-monopoly Microsoft (largely achieved even without the "year of the Linux desktop"), but I can't help but feel things would have been much better without ESR's shift in focus.

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by pTamok on Friday September 28 2018, @10:52AM (3 children)

    by pTamok (3042) on Friday September 28 2018, @10:52AM (#741269)

    I would not be wrong to say that there isn't a single proprietary piece of software that anyone is still using from 35 years ago...

    I got Nerd Sniped [xkcd.com] by that pretty badly. Sigh. DYOR, but the number of counter-examples are legion.

    • (Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Friday September 28 2018, @12:30PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 28 2018, @12:30PM (#741302) Journal
      My company has an important part of its business running on a mainframe with a proprietary OS dating from the 70s. That would be more than 35 years.
    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 28 2018, @02:53PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 28 2018, @02:53PM (#741351) Journal

      What about proprietary software that is, in some form, descended and evolved from 35 years ago?

      1980's: p-System, Pascal, MPW Pascal
      1990's: the p-System wrapped inside a DOS EXE, Some Turbo Pascal, later FoxPro
      2000's: Visual FoxPro, some PHP
      2010's: Web application in Java

      Each of those transitions didn't happen on the exact decade boundary. And multiple products are involved, not a single product.

      All along the way there has been tooling to convert customer data. There is probably not any single customer database that transitioned from the very first to the very latest.

      The complexity and capabilities of the products has grown substantially. But it has not grown beyond the imagination of what was conceivable by the first early developers, of which I was one of. (I have also never changed jobs, or written one single resume in my life.)

      Does that sort of, kind of count?

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @02:06AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @02:06AM (#741649)

      I'm playing plenty of ancient games, which are also software.

  • (Score: 5, Funny) by choose another one on Friday September 28 2018, @11:13AM (14 children)

    by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 28 2018, @11:13AM (#741274)

    there isn't a single proprietary piece of software that anyone is still using from 35 years ago

    Yeah, umm, b***ocks.

    First you have the grandfather's axe / Theseus's paradox problem - Emacs was released in '85 but I doubt anyone uses that version today, but I reckon some code probably survives, so is Emacs a piece of software from 35yrs ago or not? If not, which piece of GNU software do you think is in-use unmodified from 35 years ago?

    OTOH examples:

    1. I personally wrote code back in the late 80s for a project that dated back to 1983. The OS was custom written in assembly language. The product is still in use, later revisions might have excised bits of code further up the stack, my code probably isn't used anymore, but I very much doubt they re-engineered everything from the OS up, so that 35yr old OS code is still used. If they are still maintaining the code stack they may be using the compilers and tool chains which were from the 70's for a language from the 60's.

    2. COBOL (MicroFocus COBOL is 40yrs old)

    3. Your bank, probably, see above

    4. Proprietary versions of *BSD probably include 35yr old code (see http://www.osnews.com/story/19731/The-25-Year-Old-UNIX-Bug [osnews.com] from 2008)

    5. Proprietary versions of TeX probably include code that is even older (and original TeX licence is strange, not entirely free)

    6. Proprietary versions of Unix may include code that is even older than that

    7. Voyager 1 (and 2) onboard code

    bored now, is that enough?

    • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday September 28 2018, @11:35AM (4 children)

      by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Friday September 28 2018, @11:35AM (#741279) Journal

      Confirmation....

      10 CLS
      20 PRINT "WHAT IS YOUR NAME?"
      30 INPUT B$
      40 PRINT "YOU STINK, ";B$
      50 GOTO 40

      --
      This sig for rent.
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by choose another one on Friday September 28 2018, @01:35PM

        by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 28 2018, @01:35PM (#741315)

        Bugger, I'd forgotten Micro Computers for a reason, now I've just spent hours playing chuckie egg on an emulator and desperately trying to resist trying Elite...

      • (Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Friday September 28 2018, @02:57PM (2 children)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 28 2018, @02:57PM (#741353) Journal

        10 CLS
        20 PRINT "WHAT IS YOUR NAME?"
        30 INPUT B$
        40 PRINT "YOU STINK, ";B$
        50 GOTO 40

        60 PROFIT!

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday September 28 2018, @05:04PM

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday September 28 2018, @05:04PM (#741422) Journal

          RUN 60

          --
          The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
        • (Score: 2) by EETech1 on Saturday September 29 2018, @04:01AM

          by EETech1 (957) on Saturday September 29 2018, @04:01AM (#741675)

          You're never gonna make any money that way!

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Friday September 28 2018, @12:05PM (4 children)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 28 2018, @12:05PM (#741288)

      35 years is bullshit because of the PS/2 keyboard standard being 31 years old.

      I'm typing this at 100 WPM on a genuine original edition IBM Model M with a birthdate on the bottom of 06JAN88 so my keyboard is 30+ years old now. I've been using it since the 90s when I got it from a previous employer (along with a pile of obsolete IBM PS/2 hardware)

      The code in the microcontroller inside the keyboard is over thirty years old.

      Now this is supposedly unusual to use a keyboard thats heavier than most laptops. However the world is full of industrial appliance type equipment with old keyboards and mice plugged in.

      My MiL has a 90s era microwave oven that just won't burn out.

      I have and occasionally use a TI-81 calculator dating from 1990.

      • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday September 29 2018, @02:20AM (3 children)

        by deimtee (3272) on Saturday September 29 2018, @02:20AM (#741650) Journal

        My preferred calculator is the Casio FX4000P, only made in 1985. (also sold as the Radio Shack EC-4020)
        I had to pay quite a bit for a second hand one a few years ago when my original finally died.

        --
        If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @01:06PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @01:06PM (#741780)

          Why do programmable calculators still cost over $100?

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @06:28PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @06:28PM (#741864)

            Near-monopoly + captive market

          • (Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday September 29 2018, @11:50PM

            by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Saturday September 29 2018, @11:50PM (#741953)

            Why do programmable calculators still cost over $100?

            Weird but true datapoint:

            Most Texas Instruments education-required K12 calculators cost far more than swissmicros small production run custom products.

            I have to admit I've almost pulled the trigger on buying a DM16L a ridiculous number of times. Although I have a great emulator on my phone.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 28 2018, @12:23PM

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Friday September 28 2018, @12:23PM (#741297) Homepage Journal

      I know of multiple instances of industrial controller code that's been in service so long that they have to have spares and rebuild if one breaks because they're no longer made. They're going over to Beta Raven mostly in new stuff but they hate losing money and would be out millions even if it was a straight up swap out of a pre-programmed new unit for old stuff. And nothing is ever going to work that perfectly.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @11:46PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @11:46PM (#741613)

      which piece of GNU software do you think is in-use unmodified from 35 years ago?

      If Redhat had been around back then...

      How about everything IBM ships with AIX?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @01:08PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @01:08PM (#741782)

        ZOS is based on OS/390 which is based on.. yeah, there's code in there going back decades.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @01:04PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @01:04PM (#741779)

      Ever seen SAP stuck in as a web front end to a COBOL system running code on ZOS that still has elements from the 1970s?

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Friday September 28 2018, @11:40AM (3 children)

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Friday September 28 2018, @11:40AM (#741280) Homepage Journal

    I remember this guy, I saw him before. I was on a drive with my daughter Ivanka. I told the driver, stop. And I said, "see that bum? He has a billion dollars more than me." That's how deeply in debt I was. I owed a billion dollars. And now I have more than $10 billion. Incredible turn-around. Like I'm turning our Country around.

    Believe me, I haven't forgotten Richard. And I haven't forgotten our other homeless. So many were our great & very brave soldiers in Vietnam. In Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq -- many places. After spending TRILLIONS on very foolish wars -- wars that, frankly, were mistakes -- the guys that fought them, that lived, are living on our streets. That ends NOW. We're giving away $2 billion to END HOMELESSNESS. We call it our Continuum of Care Program. And I have Ben Carson, brilliant neurosurgeon, one of our smartest guys, in charge of it. MAGA! hud.gov/sites/documents/22-HOMELESSAGRANTS.PDF [hud.gov]

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @03:53AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @03:53AM (#741673)

      And now I have more than $10 billion.

      Prove it. Where are the tax returns you promised to release if you were elected?

      Then again, you have benefited massively from violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, so it's only NOW that you have more than $10 billion.

      • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday September 29 2018, @04:37AM (1 child)

        by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Saturday September 29 2018, @04:37AM (#741700) Homepage Journal

        Everybody knows I'm very very rich. I don't have to prove it. And I don't have to prove anything to anyone. But you can look at my Financial Disclosure. And everybody can look at that one. Very strong financials.

        My tax returns, I'll tell you, IRS has been a huge pain in the ass for me. Obama used IRS as his personal attack dog. And as the Democrat Party attack dog. If you were Tea Party, if you were 9-12, if you were a Patriot -- audit. Or if you criticized Obama, criticized the Dems -- audit. And as you know I was one of the very few people saying, "what about Birth Certificate? Show us the Birth Certificate!" Guy wanted to be President, unfortunately was elected President, nobody asked about his Birth Certificate! I asked, I got audited. And by the way, some liberals. Not many. They didn't agree with Obama, didn't agree with Dem Party bigwigs, they got the audit too.

        And I said, I'm being audited, I'm not putting my returns out there. Tax experts throughout the Media agree that no sane person would give their tax returns during an audit. After the audit, no problem! I’m being audited now for four or five years, so I can’t release until the audit is finished, obviously. And I could tell the folks in IRS, "cancel my audit or I'll fire you." If I wanted to get impeached. Trust me, as soon as the audit’s finished, it will be released.

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 30 2018, @02:30AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 30 2018, @02:30AM (#741981)

          Trust me, as soon as the audit’s finished, it will be released.

          Trustworthy people do not need to say "trust me" -- they actually DO what they say.

          Liars, on the other hand... see: NYT [nytimes.com], Politifact [politifact.com], DailyWire [dailywire.com], Bill Moyers [billmoyers.com], BuzzFeed News [buzzfeednews.com], NY Daily News [nydailynews.com], The Washington Post [washingtonpost.com], CNN [cnn.com], The Daily Show [youtube.com], Time [time.com], Huffington Post [huffingtonpost.com], Slate Magazine [slate.com], USA Today [usatoday.com], US News and World Report [usnews.com], National Review [nationalreview.com], and Toronto Star [trumplies.us].

          And don't try any of that "Fake News" crap, or are you going to claim that ALL of those publications are liars? "People in glass houses should not throw stones".

          If you were trustworthy, you would have no need to say "trust me"... your honesty would be obvious from your behaviour and actions.

  • (Score: 5, Funny) by LaminatorX on Friday September 28 2018, @11:59AM (9 children)

    by LaminatorX (14) <laminatorxNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday September 28 2018, @11:59AM (#741286)
    Richard Stallman had a printer
    whose code he could not see.
    So he began to tinker
    and set the software free.
    • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday September 28 2018, @01:51PM

      by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Friday September 28 2018, @01:51PM (#741317) Journal

      Recycle your code
      Like plum trees new visions here
      Just dump the cruft, please.

      --
      This sig for rent.
    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 28 2018, @03:02PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 28 2018, @03:02PM (#741358) Journal


      SCO's C.E.O. Darl McBride
      To the Press, he repeatedly lied
      Linux stole our I.P.!
      G.P.L.'ed it for FREE!
      But no evidence could he provide

      spell out acronyms, except pronounce SCO as one sylable. I wrote that more than a decade ago.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @03:52PM (5 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @03:52PM (#741382)

      Richard Stallman had a printer
      whose code he could not see.

      Buy a printer today. You still cannot see the code.

      So what has changed? That printer you bought contains free software written by unpaid volunteers. You still are not allowed to see the code or modify the code. The unpaid volunteers got paid zero to develop the code. You just paid a corporation which took free software from unpaid volunteers and denied you the freedoms which RMS told you you would have. And you got a nice printed copy of the GPL that lists the freedoms which you do not have.

      What did RMS actually accomplish? RMS SOLD FREE LABOR TO CORPORATIONS.

      RMS lied, or so it would appear. Except he did not lie at all. Read the GNU Manifesto.

      Probably programming will not be as lucrative on the new basis as it is now. But that is not an argument against the change. It is not considered an injustice that sales clerks make the salaries that they now do. If programmers made the same, that would not be an injustice either.

      RMS ENTIRE GOAL HAS ALWAYS BEEN TO MAKE PROGRAMMERS POOR.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @05:40PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @05:40PM (#741443)

        You are very delusional. Seems you just can't make a living writing code so you'll yell about everyone you feel misled you? Grow up buddy boy.

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @12:21AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @12:21AM (#741618)

          Dear stable genius,

          Why do I own a TV that runs on Linux and free software?
          Why can I see a full copy of the GPL in the TV setup menus?
          Why can't I get full copies of the source code to all the free software in my TV?
          Why doesn't my TV have an SSH port open for me to modify the software in my TV?
          Why am I not allowed to write my own software and install it on my TV?
          Why don't I have my freedoms?

          Answer the questions, stable genius.

      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 28 2018, @06:38PM (2 children)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 28 2018, @06:38PM (#741470) Journal

        The movement started by Richard Stallman has been so successful that here we are today watching Microsoft tripping all over itself trying to embrace open source. Something not to be believed in the mid 90's when Microsoft dominated everything and it looked like it might never change.

        That open source powers everything in the world. The rising tide has lifted everyone's boat.

        If a device manufacturer is using any code in violation of an open source license, then they could (and sometimes do) get sued for it, and lose.

        What did RMS accomplish? We now have an embarrassing amount of open source riches upon which we poor coders build upon to create bigger and better things, making money in the process.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @12:42AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @12:42AM (#741623)

          If a device manufacturer is using any code in violation of an open source license, then they could (and sometimes do) get sued for it, and lose.

          You seriously don't know what you're talking about. Billion dollar corporations know exactly how to exploit open source for free without violating any licenses, without acknowledging they even use open source, without paying any coders a cent, and without passing on any open source freedoms to their users.

          The only thing RMS ever accomplished is socializing the costs of software production while privatizing all the profits. RMS is the greatest communist villain ever to sell out to capitalists.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @08:27AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @08:27AM (#741745)

            Billion dollar corporations know exactly how to exploit open source

            My standard question: "If you are so rich, why aren't you smart?" They do not know this. Corporations are not people, my friend, they are lizard people. Vote for the Lizard-people, so that the wrong Lizerd peoples donk gett in jl;ajd dhalf fh89s-*Y&l,. [end transmission untraceable to the interstellar starship in deep orbit around the Earth]

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday September 28 2018, @05:10PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday September 28 2018, @05:10PM (#741425) Journal

      That's no Limerick.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @12:33PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @12:33PM (#741304)

    Do find out https://archive.org/details/faif-2.0 [archive.org] (rms bio)

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @11:37PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @11:37PM (#741603)

    It's feeling GNOLD. Or at least a mid-life crisis: it'll buy a Mustang, get hair transplants, and stay out too late.

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