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Last month, Congress voted to repeal FCC rules that would prevent internet service providers from selling your personal web browsing and app usage data. It was a decision that's unpopular across the country, regardless of party affiliation. If the politicians that voted in favor of the reversal thought no one would notice, there are some big ass signs in their districts that say otherwise.
The internet activists at the non-profit Fight for the Future have crowdfunded four billboards, so far, that shame the members of congress that voted for the repeal. The lawmakers that have the honor of being called out will now have to see their face along the highway when they return home. Those lucky few are Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Dean Heller (R-NV), John Rutherford (R-FL) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ). These four lawmakers accepted a combined $196,905 in campaign contributions from the telecom industry in the last election cycle. Blackburn, in particular, has been a longtime enemy of net neutrality. Just last year, she brought up SOPA and tried to frame it as an initiative that would have increased cybersecurity.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday May 07 2017, @05:32PM (2 children)
Crowdfunded billboards could be used to recruit coders to work on GNU HURD?
Well, sarcasm aside and serious for a moment, let's consider some of rms's policy items...
1. He perceived a need for a free OS as a base to run free software...
2. He conceived GNU, a proposed free drop-in Unix-replacement OS...
3. Many pieces of GNU were written, enough to make an OS save for a useful kernel...
4. Linus Torvalds released his kernel Linux under the terms of the GPL...
5. People could, and did, combine the Linux kernel with GNU tools and parts and make an OS.
So far so good.
5. And people credit Linux for the system, since Linux made the disparate parts a system in the first place...
6. And so they listen to the philosophy of Linux creator Linus, who thinks proprietary software is okay *shrug* and doesn't see the big deal...
7. Instead of listening to rms, the FSF, and the GNU folks who promote the view that software should be free as a matter of ethics...
This bothers rms, and understandably so, because of course he'd like people to listen to him, thus spreading his philosophies.
Time passes...
Now, after lots of software progress over the years, from the Linux point of view, the "lots of other pieces" needed to make a free operating system out of linux could come from multiple places, not necessarily GNU. A lot of that is in busybox alone, for example. Sure, the GNU tools are often nicer, or more feature-rich, but the point is there are other usable, working tools in place right now to make a complete free operating system out of linux + other things that are not GNU.
But from the GNU/rms point of view, after those same years, that "one remaining piece" needed to make a free operating system out of GNU (the Kernel, "HURD") is still a steaming pile of unusability: no 64-bit, no USB support, no drivers to speak of, crashy-memoryhogging-unstable. It's fun to play with--Debian GNU/HURD is a nice technical preview that's even easy to install--but you wouldn't run a server, much less your workstation, with it.
Seems like the things Stallman is complaining about (at least in the OS -> spreading philosophy area) would clear up pretty quickly if someone would either "finish HURD"* or otherwise write a kernel that the FSF could combine with in-house GNU projects and release as "GNU 1.0: Gnu's Not Unix". Presto, shiny operating system composed of all free software, put out by folks who live the ethical free software life in the free world.
*This (finishing HURD/Making a GNU non-linux operating system) isn't a goal, by the way; according to gnu.org [gnu.org] (bottom of page), any continued work on the HURD happens "because it is an interesting technical project."
But maybe it should be a coherent goal: Maybe that might help Stallman, and allies that he has, also gain mindshare in the fight for things like digital rights and digital privacy at issue with Congress' pimping of its constituents' private data created with their relationships with ISPs.
In a sense, crowdfunding billboards to shame slimeball lawmakers, and crowdfunding billboards looking for HURD coders, are two aspects of the same mindshare campaign.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 08 2017, @12:21AM
Actually lack of USB support can almost be seen as a security benefit ;-) but quite unpractical.
Driver support tend to come with many developers using the system and commercial entities using it.
The interesting concepts that can be developed into a "killer" OS for the feature can be:
* Using a microkernel can get rid of a lot of system instabilities, provide security compartmentalization, make development easier etc.
* By having interprocess handling, services, drivers and filesystem running as user mode processes both security and development becomes easier. Having a filesystem crash right now usually crashes the kernel too.
* When the CPU is abstracted as a service, other processors that are physically elsewhere may be integrated with less special case handling. So that it looks like the local processor have many more cores than it actually has.
* The microkernel decreases the attack surface in comparison with monolithic kernel.
The microkernel may possible be equipped with system monitors that thwart unauthorized system operations from other security "rings" (hint -2). Moving processes between distant CPUs may perhaps also be implemented. And hypervisor alike functionality without the need for the CPU to support it.
All software projects are a pile of crap until it's developed into something better.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday May 08 2017, @12:26AM
[...] the "lots of other pieces" needed to make a free operating system out of linux could come from multiple places, not necessarily GNU.
Possibilities include Darwin, OpenSolaris, Plan 9, Inferno, Minix and *BSD. The initial release of the Linux kernel was 17 September 1991 and 386BSD came out just six months later, on 12 March 1992.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/386BSD [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel [wikipedia.org]