CASE AGAINST FREE SOFTWARE

I am writing to protest the recent article "All software should be free, software developer maintains" [CW, Dec. 24] in which Richard Stallman was given a platform to propound his advocacy of "free software" and the abolition of copyrights.

One need ask Stallman only one question to understand why he endorses such a vague concept as free software. How will software producers live if not by selling the fruits of their labors?

Stallman knows the answer - by government subsidy. You can bet Stallman, spoiled by government-funded academic research programs, longs for the day his kind can dictate the course of the software industry from some ivory tower in Washington D.C.

Stallman claims that the arts and sciences progress "most quickly when people build on each other's work." Yet, how does this work of others come into being in the first place? Does Stallman honestly believe in effects without causes?

No. Stallman's position is an act of moral cowardice to evade the fact that science progresses precisely by the discoveries of independent minds pursuing their own goals and interests. Stailman denies the existence of independent men in order to defend by unspoken implication his own vices — dependence and parasitism.

Allow me to quote the U.S. Constitution on the subject of progress in the arts and sciences: "The Congress shall ... promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writing and Discoveries."

Stallman's assertions that anyone who will not subordinate his life and work to the unearned benefit of others is an "enemy of society" and that trade is an "offense" to the traders are the type of totally fallacious misconceptions one would expect to see editorialized in some third rate Marxist tabloid.

Other urls found in this thread:

cygwin.com/ml/glibc-bugs/2011-02/msg00090.html).
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Stallman's feeling of "shame" when using the products of software companies reveals a fundamental hatred for the pride of the creators of these products, and consequently, a hatred for man's highest faculty, his creative mind. There is no more evil doctrine, and no "golden rule" will ever justify it.

This man brazenly proposes to "interfere as much as [he] can with other people's attempts to interfere with the sharing of software." In other words, he In-tends to obstruct enforcement of the copyright laws. Obstruction of Justice, which Stallman apparently doesn't realize, is a felony.

In closing. I vow to seek every legal remedy from this man should he ever steal any of my company's software products.

-- Thomas A. Murphy, Roseville, Mich.

"Linux's success may indeed be the single strongest argument for my thesis: The excitement generated by a clone of a decades-old operating system demonstrates the void that the systems software research community has failed to fill." -- Rob Pike, original developer of Unix and author of The Unix Programming Environment

Everything in Linux sucks. For example, when I close "Nautilus" file manager window, it doesnt terminate program, but puts it in background. Why? To leak more CPU and memory! The xfce4-menu-plug already ate 140 megabytes of memory, and it's just a toolbar! When I try to `kill -s KILL gnome-screensaver`, it blanks whole screen and only reboot helps. Gedit (a simple notepad) takes whooping 60 megabytes to edit a few lines of text and it loads about 10 seconds! Opening a directory in file browser sometimes takes minutes, due to its file type detection feature (it scans and makes thumbnail of every file). Thousands of thumbnails stored inside ~/.thumbnails slow down image viewer startup by about 20 seconds. Invoking `cat` on a binary file damages terminal font and sometimes crashes bash.

Also, file type detection is extremely glitchy and detects unrelated files as PCX files. It also ignores file extension. So if it detects JPEG file as PCX, it will open it as PCX and crash viewer, despite that it has JPG extension.

Command line interface is horrible at best! Sometimes a simple typo, like "cp *", can easily mess your files. The only way to be safe with Linux is to do backup every few hours.

The new nightmare starts with /etc/ and /home directory, where programs put their config files, leaving user to learn syntax and semantics of badly designed configuration language. User also free to put any syntax errors he likes inside /etc/fstab, making system unusable. All that could have been avoided through robust and uniform configuration API with GUI.

Super user rights can't be managed precisely and every program requiring them has to be given full super-user account (setuid/setgid). No on/off switches, so a program wanting direct access to SVGA frame buffer also gets access to network connection and whole hard drive content.

POSIX API is horrible and includes a lot of undefined behavior. A change to memcpy implementation once broke tons of Linux code that depended on undefined behavior. But Worse is Better, of course (cygwin.com/ml/glibc-bugs/2011-02/msg00090.html). Production Linux code almost completely consists of ugly hacks, like following:

```
__pid_t __cdecl sub_813C7B8()
{
__pid_t result; // eax@1
char command; // [sp+18h] [bp-200h]@2

result = fork();
if ( !result )
{
sprintf(&command, "/bin/bash -c \"sleep 5; kill -9 %d\" &> /dev/null &", PID);
system(&command);
sprintf(&command, "/bin/bash -c \"sleep 8; kill -9 %d\" &> /dev/null &", PID);
system(&command);
sprintf(&command, "/bin/bash -c \"sleep 10; kill -9 %d\" &> /dev/null &", PID);
result = system(&command);
}
return result;
}
```

What you are saying comes down to "you shouldn't own the things you buy." and thats bullshit.

You buy the right to use single copy of software solution and you own that right.

Thats not ownership thats you basically renting software. I want my own software that I can really use anyway I want instead of being cucked by the creator of the software.

F P B P

OP is a corporativist shill.

GPL is the necessary evil.

Basically this tbqfh famiglia

>tripfag
>walls of text
>arguing against straw men
>cancerous opinions
Quality thread OP

Renting is software as a service, when you have to pay for Photoshop each month.
With normal retail software you own a nice box, with a CD and manual inside, that you can use without imposed time limit and sell and just give to somebody else.

> For example, when I close "Nautilus"
stopped reading

You might not be renting it but you don't own it. You should own the things you buy. I don't want people to tell me what I can do on my computer.

>For example, when I close "Nautilus" file manager window, it doesnt terminate program, but puts it in background.
You're closing the window, not the program. masOS already works like this. WIndows works like this when it comes to core processes, closing explorer closes the window, not the program. Actually closing the explorer process crashes the desktop environment, prompting it to restart.
LRN2COMPUTER

>ad hominem
haven't expected anything else from a free software apologist.

Windows advocate: Windows is good because of A, B and C.
Linux advocate: die niger-fagget! Linux is simple best because gentoo builds out of sauce codes.

Why should we seriously discuss anything with a "self-taught IT philosopher"?

You own the right to use it at a single workplace. Then in capitalist society, nothing stops you from purchasing the software itself, but it will cost a lot more and you will have to develop and maintain it yourself, paying to like 1000 programmers. Most people don't want this cost ownership.

Nice strawman. GNU+linux is good because it allows you to own your computer not be cucked by restrictions from micro$oft or applel. It allows you to customize and it provides more security that most other operating systems due to the open source code and easy audits. Its good also because its stable and can suit almost any type of computer user. Windows is a one size fits all closed source operating system that tells you what your allowed to do on your own computer that you own.

I want to own my software not the other way around so I use free software. Thats it.

>another ad hominem
astonishing progress.

Shit, I actually remember you. You're that mentally handicapped shitposter from Russian imageboards.

How did your refugee attempts play out?

>How will software producers live if not by selling the fruits of their labors?
>Stallman knows the answer - by government subsidy.
Took me 3 minutes to look up who this guy is and what his answer to the question is and find out that you're wrong. You clearly didn't research your bullshit in the slightest, I won't bother reading the rest. All I really wanted to say is that you should stop tripfagging dumbfuck.

Going from killing a hamster to burning a Russian flag is quite a progress as well. When will be a court held?

You don't own free software, Stallman does, because GPL has a clause that any GPL software is also licensed under future GPL licenses, so Stallman may at any moment relicense all GPL software under any license he likes.

So what you're saying is that the state funds free software, everyone wins?

Except the global elite, that is.

>more ad hominem
doesn't surprise me you're Russian as well. Russians can't use logic to save their life. The only tools Russians have at their disposal are insults and appeal to authority, be it Putin, Stalin or Stallman.

> Stallman may at any moment relicense all GPL software under any license he likes

That's not true, you crazy fuck. He can only do so after making agreement with __all__ other contributors or removing their code, which is impossible. He wants GNU/Linux to move to GPLv3, but he is unable to do so.

See

Big huge totalitarian state, that meddles with everything and controls software development.

Shillcrosoft, shipple and shacebook can meddle with the "big totalitarian state" as well.

Free software is less controllable, IT community is too big.

I don't get your point.

Google GPL "or any later version", tovarisch.

>How will software producers live if not by selling the fruits of their labors?
companies will still pay them to customize / work on free software, see Linux

cool thread op

Can you please suck my corporate cock some more, thank you.

>Google GPL "or any later version", tovarisch.
It's not required, it's rarely used, it's not license-restricted. You can basically replace the word GPL with any other license.

>attempt at damage control

What damage control, you retard?

If Stallman has such power over his license, why GNU/Linux is still GPLv2?

tl;dr

Ask Stallman, how the "or any later version" GPL clause works.