Names for GNU/Linux that you like

[Binky]

Nothing wrong with socialism.

True.

No much wrong with hippies either, for that matter

 

[sebt3]

Or rather, I stopped posting here because I found it to be more hostile to my views than, of all places, a Mario fangame community, and I was tired of the stress.

Then why do you come back again and again ?
Mario fans doesnt like "free" fachist much, I'ld say

 

[ZXDunny]

Or rather, I stopped posting here because I found it to be more hostile to my views than, of all places, a Mario fangame community, and I was tired of the stress.

Then why do you come back again and again ?

I suspect it's because he feels that a project that has "open" in the name should be as open as he perceives it to be, rather than as open as it needs to be. It's not enough that there's a huge amount of software given away for no cost, it's not enough that the whole OS is given away for free - if it's not as free as he demands then he feels he has to evangelise about how wrong we are, and the method he chooses is the old, tired, pointless "your linux needs to be known as GNU!" argument.

He's irrational and helplessly addicted, hence he cannot stay away for long. This is how these people (FSF proponents) behave - there's something badly wrong with them psychologically. I blame the sandals for not fitting - no matter how many pairs of socks you wear underneath, if they don't fit then they chafe and cause irrational behaviour. Possibly also khaki shorts too. That's my opinion anyway.

D.

PS - you're right about Mario. How strange that he inhabits a forum for a game for which no source has even been released, let alone GPL'd

D.

 

[diligentcircle]

Then why do you come back again and again ?

To do these polls. This is a fairly sizable open source community I know well, and I'm interested in what people in support of open source think. I want to modify my speech pattern when it comes to talking about GNU/Linux depending on who I'm talking to.

How strange that he inhabits a forum for a game for which no source has even been released, let alone GPL'd

I joined it before I was fully in support of free software when I made a fangame in Game Maker. As to why I'm still there, I just like the community.

I did say it's a Mario fangame forum. Most fangames are proprietary, too, and most of them are made with Game Maker (terrible choice), but not all fangames use proprietary software (Super Mario War is an example of one that doesn't).

 

[sebt3]

To do these polls.

These pools are useless without giving the oportunity to reply "linux" only. By doing this you're forcing choice on others, giving a freaking biais (knowing that "linux" would gather the majority)

I want to modify my speech pattern when it comes to talking about GNU/Linux depending on who I'm talking to.

I somewhat dislike the sound of this.

 

[_jr_]

Mario fans doesnt like "free" fachist much, I'ld say

The new and improved N-bomb spelling? Evading NSA filtering?

 

[diligentcircle]

These pools are useless without giving the oportunity to reply "linux" only. By doing this you're forcing choice on others, giving a freaking biais (knowing that "linux" would gather the majority)

I think this poll is going to be the most useful, because I didn't ask for favorites, just which ones are bothersome. A better way to ask about this one would have been "names for GNU/Linux you like", with multiple answers allowed and including just "Linux". I guess that would be interesting, so I'll change this topic's poll to that.

 

[moxie]

You do realise that since you've already had the poll up for so long, the results will still be unusable for anything other than demonstrating bias?

 

[ZXDunny]

I like to use Linux on my Pandora. In my mind I'm using Linux. Hence I cannot reply to this poll; it assumes that I know and acknowledge that I'm using something called "gnu/linux" which I'm not.

Edit: If any mods want to just modify the poll's premise to "How do you refer to the OS you use on your Pandora?" that might be a bit better. And add "Angstrom Linux" so we've got a chance to be more specific if we wish... That would be just perfect.

D.

 

[ZXDunny]

I want to modify my speech pattern when it comes to talking about GNU/Linux depending on who I'm talking to.

I somewhat dislike the sound of this.

Yeah, it smacks of manipulation depending on which way he applies the term "gnu". Actually, it kind of makes no sense - you don't know which way someone leans unless you ask them; the safest way would then be to just refer to it as "linux" rather than just ask. You'll know if they're FSF-conditioned if they start frothing at the corners of their mouths or just try to kill you.

D.

 

[_wb_]

Ignorance and apathy are quite common and understandable. What I don't get, is people who radically and proudly want to proclaim and propagate their ignorance and apathy, to the point that they actively attack people who attempt to educate and to make people care about issues.

The above applies mostly to politics in general (I happen to be a political activist and I've seen quite some ignorance and apathy in that), but to some extent it also applies to people like ESR and their followers when they're talking about software freedom. Although they're mostly not ignorant, they're still consciously apathic about it: they explicitly and proudly say "I Don't Care", encourage others not to care either, and would prefer it if everyone would just shut up about it so the message stops spreading, because it's easier to not care about something if you don't even know about it.

 

[sebt3]

Ignorance and apathy are quite common and understandable. What I don't get, is people who radically and proudly want to proclaim and propagate their ignorance and apathy, to the point that they actively attack people who attempt to educate and to make people care about issues.

I agree with you. But here nobody actively attack people to attempt to educate. For me education is unbiased. Bias introduce manipulation, that's what I'm reacting against.

 

[ZXDunny]

Ignorance and apathy are quite common and understandable. What I don't get, is people who radically and proudly want to proclaim and propagate their ignorance and apathy, to the point that they actively attack people who attempt to educate and to make people care about issues.

I feel the same way about evangelism.

D.

 

[Rockthesmurf]

I think outside of internet communities I hang out in, my real life simply doesn't seem to intersect with any of this (no vote from me on this poll). Friends I have worked with over the last 10 years in the games industry seem to universally think Linux is a joke, people I know who play a lot of games (on PC) also think Linux is a joke, people I know that aren't on top of technology wouldn't have a clue what you are talking about with GNU/Linux. To be honest the majority of people I speak to (including people who have been programmers for 10 years) wouldn't know what you are talking about when you say something is free as in beer, or talk about GNU. Some would probably ask if GNU is something to do with compilers.

For my Pandora, the default OS on it works pretty nice for purpose as does Slackware, both of which I would call Linux. I have a media player which is probably running what I would call Linux (I vaguely remember SSHing into it once upon a time, other than that I would have never known if it was Linux based or not). So I am certainly not against it, in certain cases it does the job 'okay'. I have had Android phones for a while, when people ask me about that I say it is running some custom version of Linux (no idea what I mean by that, but for the level of conversations I hold that seems to be a good answer).

For myself, I seem to have some sort of filter, when I'm reading stuff, if I see things like GNU, Free Beer, Freedom, when reading an article I don't really read or take in the words. Possibly part of it is because unfortunately if you made a Venn diagram of 'vocal nut jobs' and 'people that say GNU, Linux, Freedom and free as beer regularly' you'd probably end up with a huge overlap in the middle. The other part is because the values these words hold are just rated quite low for me; when deciding on a new piece of software I probably consider:

1. Features (including which OSs it runs on where applicable)

2. Price (features and price sometimes are a combination)

3. Support

4. Community

5. Update cost

6. Is the source accessible

Whether it is GNU, or not really means nothing. Source code availability is of slight interest, if two identical pieces of software, same price and everything, existed, and one was open source and the other not, I would go for the open source. In terms of which license the source is under, I wouldn't even check.

These views are clearly very different to lots of other peoples, which is fine. Everyone has different ideas of what is important to them. I can't help but feel it isn't what you got, it is what you do with it; and I guess it worries me a little bit that the amount of time fanatics preach about some of these things could be spend doing something more productive, but then again my idea of productive is different to the next persons. 

 

[ZXDunny]

if you made a Venn diagram of 'vocal nut jobs' and 'people that say GNU, Linux, Freedom and free as beer regularly' you'd probably end up with a huge overlap in the middle.

Couldn't agree more! Onpon is unfortunately one of these "vocal nutjobs" of whom you speak in my considered opinion. I am trained in psychology, so can state this with some authority.

The other part is because the values these words hold are just rated quite low for me; when deciding on a new piece of software I probably consider:

1. Features (including which OSs it runs on where applicable)

2. Price (features and price sometimes are a combination)

3. Support

4. Community

5. Update cost

6. Is the source accessible

This, this and this. And once more. Free software is just not very important to the vast majority of people; in fact as it becomes more important to an individual, the further up the "vocal nutjob scale" they tend to rise. Some manage to retain their basic decency and are generally all-round nice guys (_wb_) but most tend to be idiots.

I open my source because it's a nice thing to do. If I work on something that the original author (or one of the members of a team I work with) doesn't feel comfortable with the source being available, I'll close it quicker than you can blink with no feelings of regret whatsoever.

D.

 

[diligentcircle]

I guess it worries me a little bit that the amount of time fanatics preach about some of these things could be spend doing something more productive, but then again my idea of productive is different to the next persons. 

I reject the label "fanatic" and I think it's unfortunate that some people think advocating freedom is "fanaticism". I also reject "preaching" as a label for talking about freedom (unless you do a Church of Emacs routine or some such thing, but that's a joke). But I want to just talk about the part about productivity, so let's pretend you didn't use those loaded terms.

You admit that you have a different idea of what is "productive" than other people; in particular, those of us who want freedom most certainly view talking about freedom as productive. You disagree, and that's fine, so let's talk about productivity from your view: what about other unproductive activities, like playing video games or watching TV, for example? It's quite possible that someone who is talking about freedom is doing so instead of recreational activities rather than instead of work that you would agree is productive (such as developing free software). I don't know if this is true, but it's something to consider.

In particular, consider video games. There are a huge amount of proprietary software video games out there, but there are not anywhere near as many free software games. It stands to reason, then, that people who use only free software are not going to play as many video games as average players of proprietary software games. They are therefore likely going to fill in a significant number of recreational activity gaps with some other recreational activity. Writing software is known to be a hobby in some cases, so there's no reason talking about freedom can't be a hobby.

In short, someone talking about freedom might be eating into their time that would be spent doing "productive" things, but they might also be using time that would be spent doing "unproductive" things. You can't really make a broad assumption.

 

[_jr_]

Onpon is unfortunately one of these "vocal nutjobs" of whom you speak in my considered opinion. I am trained in psychology, so can state this with some authority.

The pot calling the kettle black.


But probably I'm just a nutjob. Without training in psychology.

 

[ZXDunny]

Onpon is unfortunately one of these "vocal nutjobs" of whom you speak in my considered opinion. I am trained in psychology, so can state this with some authority.

The pot calling the kettle black.

But probably I'm just a nutjob. Without training in psychology.

Yes, you are. And if you are qualified to judge me as such, you must grant that I am also suitably qualified to judge herr-onpon. And if you're also able to post such a judgement against myself, then you have to also admit that I am able to continue to post my judgements of onpon.

Many thanks for that validation; I, sir, am in your debt.

D.

 

[moxie]

A long time ago, back when I was living in student halls, I had a hallmate who was Very Much Christian. He spent friday and saturday nights out on town, just like us others only he was out with some other people from his pentecostal church, singing songs of praise outside "sinful establishments" such as pubs, accosting people in the street with fliers about the sunday  morning service, telling drunk people to repent, and that they would "pray for them to leave their demonic ways behind". And so on and so forth. "We are out there, evangelizing, spreading the good word where it is needed the most" he beamed, happily. I used to ask him if he ever had seen any of the people whom he had "evangelized" to, in his (or any other) church. As often is the case with people like this, he had heard stories of wondrous conversions in other places, and evangelization runs which had purified entire neighbourhoods, but when pressed on the matter of whether he, himself, had ever seen anything like this, he'd testily have to admit that no, he hadn't. Not yet. However, he was convinced that he and his friends had sown the seeds of true faith in the sinners hearts. It was just a question of time before they came. 

This used to make me very sad. Not that nobody came, but that he was being so boneheadedly counter-productive, not only to his own cause, but to every church and denomination that existed in town. I've always been interested in religious discussion (and of a rather more sedate, quiet and meditative version of the christian faith). However, he and his band of friends made any attempt at actual fruitful conversation on anything approaching religion completely impossible. They drove people away, of course, and anybody who would admit to have anything approaching christian leanings in a discussion would have to spend the rest of the night explaining over and over again that they "wasn't like them". 

But of course, it felt good. They were In The Right, doing The Right Thing, and all his peers (that is, the other people in the small group) could see him working the crowds to the best of the specs, handing out flyers to the most sinful, singing The Word clearly to the heathen. I once did suggest, one late saturday night when he'd come back to the hall overjoyed by the nights "work", that perhaps they did it more for themselves than for the people they preached to. That discussion did not end well. I didn't think someone like him would use such words.

---

The town where I lived has an aeroplane factory which builds fighter planes. Now the act of building heavy weapons systems does come with some ethical questions which could do with some well-thought out reasoning in order to justify doing this, or come to the conclusion that this really rather ought not be done. Luckily for the factory, this thought had struck some peace activists from other places in Sweden, who arrived to liberate us from the military-industrial complex. A group of these people climbed over the fence and broke into one of the hangars, where they found an outdated fighter plane of the kind that was being replaced with these new ones. They had brought hammers, so they found something sticking out on the wings that might possibly be a weapons armament point, tapped on it a bit with their hammers, proudly proclaimed the fighter plane disarmed and sat down and waited for the police to come fetch them. The next group of these people climbed over the fence a week later in a secluded corner of the airfield, where they symbolically buried a paper crane under a pile of cherries, and then sat down and sang whilst waiting for the police. 

The actions got great media coverage. The activists were photographed and interviewed, the trials were well-publicised, and no single detail was left un-reported anywhere. They where, of course, big heroes in their own circles (which wasn't much, considering that most of what constituted these circles were now in prison for trespassing on military grounds). Anyone wants to hazard a guess at the chances of a reasoned, balanced discussion of the ethics of building fighter planes after this?

---

See, in contrast to Stephen and Dunny, I think open source software is a rather important thing (and before onpon starts to lecture me on the proper use of adjectives, I mean this in the free, libre, juridically unfettered way. Keep your word games). My priority list is definitely placing openness on a top spot, just below "Runs on Linux" since I do not use anything else, really. I can't really think of any software that I use (or wants to use) that is not under GPL or something very similar (and, once again, I want to specify that here I do not include binary blobs in the pandora wifi or whether the graphics card in my desktop computer has completely open drivers. I'm talking about stuff that I have some sort of control over). Being part of the university computer science world, I really would like to see a proper, deep discussion in the society about the importance of open source development practice and philosophical underpinnings, the way it parallels the academic standard of peer reviewed publications, the importance in an increasingly complexly technological society that said society is able to control the systems that run it, and so on. Particularly in light of recent stuff regarding the NSAs listening in on everyone, the privacy concerns of ubiquitous computing, and a lot of stuff like that. 

However, that is difficult to achieve, because there is people standing in the way. The man who wants to tout himself as the leader and father of the movement believes in making lists of people and vendors that are not pure enough, quips that he's glad that Steve Jobs is gone, and makes it into a joke that someone should rather starve than write something that is not Gnu-certified free. The movement he's heading has as its most visible goal the use of the word "GNU" in different weird places (take a look at gnu.org - What issues have the most prominent placings?). His disciples proudly proclaim that the origins of the compiler and c libraries on a computer is more important than the whole graphical environment, since no user really needs the graphical environment, and visits forums on the web that are really not up to the proper GNU/Standards in order to spread flyers and sing...I mean, post topics and polls that are obviously nothing but propaganda for the One GNU/True way, and apparently believes that this is "productive". The parallels to my evangelical friend is amazing. The standards to which one must abide in order to be pure enough is so strict that once, The Leader himself had to announce that the latest two versions shipped of GNU/Emacs (not the least of GNUs offerings) where actually in violation of the GPL, and thus that they could not be distributed as properly Free software (and, by extension, anyone distributing these versions of Emacs were no longer distributing a Free OS). By accident, a couple of bison grammar input files in a fairly obscure subpackage had been lost, and so the complete source code wasn't distributed. And everyone, EVERYONE in a CS environment know about one or two students that are agitating in this way and disturbing normal lectures. 

This is the single most difficult problem to overcome when trying to further the acceptance and use of properly free software, with open and accessible sources. At least in the environment of trying to spread this by word-of-mouth to generally computer-competent people - The kind you'd expect to be the most interested in moving in this direction. In most every such discussion, somebody suddenly remember "Wait...isn't this the kinds of things that that Magnus in CS213 last fall used to be raving about all the time?" and then you've lost, again. It really is disheartening. But I'm sure it feels good to be, you know, In The Right. 

---

The hospitals in my area are in dire troubles. The population is booming, and the political leadership has caught some sort of NPM bug and are apparently believing that everyone except their own "trusted advisors" are lying to them about how mothers are giving birth in the ditch beside the road, whilst being on the way to the third hospital since the maternity wards on the first two were full. Or how people die in the hospital corridors since the staff are too overworked to be able to check up on people for several hours. 

A month ago or so, there was a conference for the whole region, where stuff like public transport, local environmental issues, priorities in urban development and so on was discussed. And, since one or two of those above mentioned politicians were attending, a bunch of concerned citizens decided that this would be a good place to do a demonstration. Which they did by standing outside the conference screaming (in order to make it impossible to continue the discussion), throw eggs at passersby, and accosting attendees that dared to show their faces with questions such as "Does it feel good to kill the elderly? Does it give you a hard-on?" (remember - The attendees are local councilpeople here to discuss whether bus number 5 ought to go this or that side around the square). One of the activists proudly proclaimed (with complete seriousness) that actually, everybody inside that conference ought to be shot in the head.

People make me sad.

 

[diligentcircle]

See, in contrast to Stephen and Dunny, I think open source software is a rather important thing (and before onpon starts to lecture me on the proper use of adjectives, I mean this in the free, libre, juridically unfettered way. Keep your word games).

I'm not sure what you're talking about, there was nothing incorrect in this sentence.

Being part of the university computer science world, I really would like to see a proper, deep discussion in the society about the importance of open source development practice and philosophical underpinnings, the way it parallels the academic standard of peer reviewed publications, the importance in an increasingly complexly technological society that said society is able to control the systems that run it, and so on. Particularly in light of recent stuff regarding the NSAs listening in on everyone, the privacy concerns of ubiquitous computing, and a lot of stuff like that. 

However, that is difficult to achieve, because there is people standing in the way. The man who wants to tout himself as the leader and father of the movement believes in making lists of people and vendors that are not pure enough, quips that he's glad that Steve Jobs is gone, and makes it into a joke that someone should rather starve than write something that is not Gnu-certified free. The movement he's heading has as its most visible goal the use of the word "GNU" in different weird places (take a look at gnu.org - What issues have the most prominent placings?). His disciples proudly proclaim that the origins of the compiler and c libraries on a computer is more important than the whole graphical environment, since no user really needs the graphical environment, and visits forums on the web that are really not up to the proper GNU/Standards in order to spread flyers and sing...I mean, post topics and polls that are obviously nothing but propaganda for the One GNU/True way, and apparently believes that this is "productive". The parallels to my evangelical friend is amazing.

This is a lot of text, but all you're really saying is: "the free software movement looks to me like annoying religious people", yet you don't really explain how your supposed observations of the free software movement are similar to the religious friend you talked about earlier on. I don't know of anybody in the free software movement who hangs outside of Apple stores and tries to "preach" to Apple users; the closest thing to this I can think of is when some FSF employees handed Trisquel CDs to people when Windows 8 was released, which was obviously a strategic move to tie into the "they changed it, now it sucks" backlash that Windows 8 had. I'm also not aware of anyone in the free software movement who proclaims that others have been successful at "converting" people into using free software. It just doesn't work that way.

In order to get something that could be reasonably compared to your religious friend from free software activism, you would have to have someone like me hunting down posts that have some mention of a proprietary program and saying "join us , don't use the proprietary program X, use program Y, which is free software!", or "join us, don't use proprietary program X, just live without it!" Similarly, you would have someone like me going to topics just to post "it's not Linux, it's GNU/Linux!" I do not do that, I have never done that, and I have never seen anyone do this. What really happens is someone like me, who is passionate about software freedom, very occasionally (maybe once a month in a community she is particularly active in) brings up free software when it is relevant, and every single time, some other guy aggressively tells her to shut up and stop posting about free software all the time. I have even had to worry about this when what I said was as relevant as a post can get (such as a recommendation of Trisquel in a topic where someone was explicitly asking for GNU/Linux recommendations).

Regarding specific claims in that quote:

• Yes, Richard Stallman said that it's good that Steve Jobs is gone. But no, Richard Stallman isn't like a "father" or even a "leader" to in the free software movement. He's well-respected as the man who started the movement and for his ability to speak, but I haven't seen anyone who blindly agrees with everything he says. Every free software advocate I have seen has multiple disagreements with RMS, and this isn't even all that hard because he posts a huge amount of disagreeable opinions on his personal website.
• I don't know if RMS has made a joke about proprietary software programmers starving, but I know that his actual position is that they won't. He said in one speech something like, "I don't see a reason to believe that these highly skilled and educated people would be unable to get a job." There are several more ways to put food on the table than just developing proprietary software. I do think I read in an interview that he thinks dying would be better than developing proprietary software (or it might have even been that it's better than using proprietary software), but see above; RMS isn't a god or a saint or a messiah.
• Regarding spying from the NSA: I don't see how the open source movement, which deliberately silences any mention of freedom in favor of practical convenience, can help with this, and I don't see how the free software movement is hurting it. You're going to need to provide specific examples.
• What do you mean by "use of the word 'GNU' in different weird places"? "GNU" simply refers to the operating system which was started in 1984. The FSF and the GNU Project never use "GNU" to refer to anything else.
• We're not "disciples" (see above), and I don't know anyone who thinks that the C compiler and C libraries are more important than the graphical session (maybe you met someone who does, but I haven't; you're suggesting that it's commonplace). GNU isn't just a C compiler; it's an operating system. Also, please note that it is X that is at the core of the graphics; there was never a GNU window manager because X existed, was free, and worked fine. So rather than wasting time writing a whole new window manager, they just made the system work with X.
• This isn't a random forum. I was a member of this community at one point. You're suggesting that what I have done is gone to a random forum that is in support of open source and started posting topics saying "come to free software and stop using that evil proprietary software!" In truth, the first time I ever brought the topic up would have been when I was still an active member of this community.
• In fact, I didn't even post these topics to advocate free software. I only ever mentioned it as an explanation for why "GNU" matters, and I never tried to argue for it. (If I had, you would have seen my list of common arguments by now.)

...not up to the proper GNU/Standards... One GNU/True way... two versions shipped of GNU/Emacs...

None of these make sense. The slash tells that two things are either combined or alternative names for the same thing. "GNU" is neither of these for any of these cases. You're trying to say "free software standards", "free software doctrine", and "GNU Emacs", but instead you say "not up to the proper GNU or Standards", "One GNU or True way", and "two versions shipped of GNU, which is also known as Emacs".