Stallman has always been right. Took me many years to understand just how far he saw into the future. It's mind boggling just how right he was about everything.
The current status quo is corporations and governments are locking the hardware down, rendering free software irrelevant. Sure, you can hack your computer, but if you do it fails remote attestation and is marked as untrustworthy by other computers on the internet. "Tampered with" your machine? Can't access bank account, can't message others, can't stream content, can't even play video games, maybe one day we won't even be able to connect to an ISP. Hackers in control of their systems are marginalized, ostracized second class citizens now. Only corporate and government owned devices can participate in the wider ecosystem now. If you own your machine you're banned from everything.
And it's only going to get worse. Stallman is losing this war. Computing freedom is being destroyed and there's little that can be done about it. We do not have the power. Our values are irrelevant to the wider population. It's a damn shame.
> Our values are irrelevant to the wider population.
This is the saddest part. Things are getting worse for everyone and most people just don't care. They are either ignorant or accept it as inevitable.
I see 2 issues:
1) People don't have real power. There's too many steps between an issue you care about and a solution which requires changing laws. I don't see a solution other than people voting on laws directly and possibly votes weighted by how much they actually know about the stuff. How to implement it at reasonable cost is a very difficult question.
2) You can't make people care. People only start caring once they personally get hurt. Theoretical downsides don't interest most of the population. Freedom of speech is something they've learned at school about and they know they are supposed to cheer for it but when a platform requires spelling fuck as f*ck, that's OK with them - it might be the canary in the coal mine before more sophisticated censorship (analysis of sentiment/meaning, shadow bans) is rolled out but that's a theoretical concern, if they are able to comprehend it at all. And even when they get hurt, they often don't learn from it. I've seen plenty of people lose accounts on various platforms but all they do is switch to another proprietary platform, without looking for real alternatives.
unless the general population somehow freaks into privacy and anonymity and independency, it seems slowly losing (i don't hold my breath, seen enough "freebies" that later turn into highly-paid and noone bothering). Or said in another way, it seems like.. irrelevant?
But you never know. May be garage-made ESP64-meshes will appear, in a parallel "universe". Or whatever. When things get hot..
> May be garage-made ESP64-meshes will appear, in a parallel "universe".
I've been posting this idea for a while. We need a way to manufacture free computers at home, just like we can write free software at home. That's the only way we'll have a chance at winning the war on general purpose computing. Semiconductor fabs cost billions of dollars, they are single points of failure, easily controlled by governments and industry interests. We'll never be free as long as we depend on them for our machines.
If this continues, one day we'll not even be able to buy general purpose computers anymore. Computers are too subversive, too powerful for "mere citizens" to have access to. Give people free computers and they can make a mockery of things like copyright, they can wipe out entire sectors of the economy. Give people free computers and they have access to encryption which is capable of defeating police, judges, spies, militaries. They don't want us having unrestricted access to this powerful stuff. This is similar to the right to bear arms in the USA.
Normal people? They'll surrender all their power and freedom no questions asked. They'll give it all up with literally zero resistance. Corporations tell them they need to own their computers. They need it to stop malware, to stop cheating in video games, whatever. And they believe it. They believe it so much when you try to make a stand for freedom they come and they argue with you about it. They trade freedom for security and convenience every single time. It's so sad.
One sort of "big-picture" idea that I've seen that I think is generally useful is kind of like this: For a VERY long time, Linux was kind of a joke for most.
But I realized that, it being 1% of desktops was still VITALLY IMPORTANT, even when it was never huge -- it provided enough "background pressure" for mainstream things to not screw up overly badly.
I see e.g. "homelabs" and "self-hosting" as doing that right now. And, again, given that Linux won :) -- we will see.
Not only did it provide that background pressure, but desktop software is a complex domain. So it often pushes the bounds of Linux software overall. Systemd is the example I have in mind here, but I’m sure there are others too that I’m not thinking of.
YUP. Old timer here. I remember like having e.g. my Apple II, and somewhat later Stallman saying, e.g. "they're going to be able to reach into your device and burn your ebooks."
And I distinctly remember thinking how absolutely out of his mind PARANOID this man was. Because, you know, books and all are just files. And in what possible universe could you and would you build in the possibility of some other remote person having the ability to hack into the device that's IN YOUR HANDS and do something crazy like that?
By focusing strictly on software, we can argue that Stallman mostly won, and I think the mistake would be conflating software freedom with freedom freedom.
Freedom freedom will ALWAYS be hard, no matter what. People who want to take it away will use whatever tools are there to do it. Stallman et al saw that it was special to put guardrails around the very specific notion of "we have general purpose machines that can run any software, the ability to run ANY software must be protected."
And that, today, is overwhelmingly more true than false. You, or groups, can get a computer, hook it to the internet, and run whatever you want. Like "Linux," that doesn't GUARANTEE perfection, but it's an essential step.
AKA, I shudder to think what would have happened if Microsoft had developed AI in house.
The current status quo is corporations and governments are locking the hardware down, rendering free software irrelevant. Sure, you can hack your computer, but if you do it fails remote attestation and is marked as untrustworthy by other computers on the internet. "Tampered with" your machine? Can't access bank account, can't message others, can't stream content, can't even play video games, maybe one day we won't even be able to connect to an ISP. Hackers in control of their systems are marginalized, ostracized second class citizens now. Only corporate and government owned devices can participate in the wider ecosystem now. If you own your machine you're banned from everything.
And it's only going to get worse. Stallman is losing this war. Computing freedom is being destroyed and there's little that can be done about it. We do not have the power. Our values are irrelevant to the wider population. It's a damn shame.