I've cycled and driven mopeds in some pretty serious rains (including tropical monsoon downpours), and the right preparation makes all the difference. Being "stuck" on a two-wheeler during unexpected rainfall is definitely a big bummer, but a good raincoat or poncho makes all the difference, and you tend to come out reasonable dry at the end of it.
With Sunak as PM? Yes. He pretty much called Truss's plans stupid in so many words, and predicted the effects during the last leadership election. This is not really an especially high bar to clear as many people said so. The question isn't whether Sunak is the best possible PM, but what the best possible option is right now given the circumstances: a somewhat stable and "normal" person as PM vs. a general election?
It's easy to say "Tories bad, they got to go", but it's not that simple.
He didn't do badly in the last election. He doesn't have the full support of the party, but neither had Truss, and who really does in the first place, especially when things are not going so well?
The UK and US systems share a lot of similarities, which is not surprising considering the history, but UK politics seems better (or rather, less bad) to me? Both Boris and Truss were forced to resign by their own party, whereas the GOP's relationship with Trump is... well, different. Plus in spite of the first-past-the-post system there are actually candidates of alternative parties being voted in, even if we ignore the regional parties like SNP, DUP, etc. The Lib-Dems have a chequered history, but it's better than nothing.
On one hand I'd love a general election, but on the other hand I feel what's most needed now is a kind of stability and level-headedness that has been lacking with the last two PMs.
From what I can tell, Sunak might actually do a pretty good job there; and for the time being that may be preferable over the delays and uncertainty of a general election. At least for now, considering the state of things.
> you just have the problem of bicycles not fitting in either of the two historically present transport modes. They are too slow for the street and waaaaay to fast for the pedestrian side.
The biggest problems I've had have actually been in places where this isn't the case: slow-moving inner city traffic here you can just keep up with cars.
In some traffic situations this is certainly a problem, but I think it's just part of the overall problem.
> Expecting Stallman to help someone make money with proprietary software is like expecting a vegan advocate to help someone kill cows more humanely.
Many vegans are actually doing exactly that: enacting laws to improve the living conditions of animals. In the Netherlands we have the "party for the animals" in parliament for that. While their long-term goal is the elimination of meat, they also realize this is not realistic/practical in the short-term for various reasons. In the meanwhile they've been fairly successful in putting the topic of animal suffering on the agenda, making meaningful proposals to improve things, and hopefully coming closer to the long-term goals
I happen to be vegan (well, mostly anyway). Yes, you have the "extreme" vegans you might encounter on occasion, which me and my vegan friends tend to dislike as well, but most are significantly more pragmatic than you might think. It's just that you hear less from them as they're not as "loud".
If a farmer was to walk up to me and ask me "how can I improve the welfare of my animals in my factory farm?" then I'd do my best to make meaningful improvements, even though I think factory farming in general is unethical.
Now, back to Free Software: in broad lines I agree with Stallman, but just find his approach unhelpful, and I don't think that can just be hand-waved away with "but [he thinks] it's unethical".
I don't think Free Software has to be difficult to explain: "if you encounter a bug in your program/game then anyone can fix it, and you don't have to wait for the manufacturer (which may never release a fix)", or "if you want a feature then anyone can add it, and maybe someone already did", or "if you don't like the new version of the software people can continue maintaining the old version".
Some practical scenarios:
- The game Guacamelee crashes at 30 minutes in to the game for me and quite a lot of other people, but I can't fix it or download an "unofficial patch" (how many games have reverse-engineered unofficial patches btw?).
- I happened to have bought Hyperlight Drifer on GOG.com today; it seems okay, but the controls are horrible to the point of being almost unplayable. Pretty sure someone would have fixed it if they could.
- Back in the day KPN (Dutch AT&T) gave everyone a wireless dongle with their internet, but the driver was bugged and after a certain Windows update it would cause BSODs, and I had to sell a lot of new wireless dongles because of that.
- How many people and organisations would have preferred running Windows XP/7 instead of more or less forcibly updating to 8/10 because Microsoft no longer maintained it?
- How many people wished they could get a version of Windows 10 that doesn't forcibly reboot on updates?
And many more. These are all things a regular person could take advantage of, and very concrete advantages for a regular person, and not all that different from "right to repair".
A big point of Free Software really is about "right to repair"; a lot of people really do want their software to do something different or is broken beyond repair, but there is no way anyone can actually make it work any different. Chances are that if you're struggling with $problemX someone else is too, and already released a fix for it. Or, especially in a corporate environment, you can hire someone.
The FSF takes a very high-level philosophical/academic views of things, as well as a very programmer-centric view, but it doesn't need to be like this.
What am I supposed to say to that? Proprietary software is not slavery, or even anywhere close to it, even if we accept the argument that it is unethical. I find this entire analogy unhelpful.
> The cause would likely not exist or at least be much weaker if not for Stallman and the FSF and GNU.
Sure, but that was back in the 80s and this is now.
That someone had a lot of good ideas and did good work 35 years ago doesn't mean they're not hampering it today. I once worked for a business where the owner worked very hard to build things up (or so I heard), but when I worked there all he really used his business for was to show his boyfriends around to impress them or something; I rarely saw him. That's all fine, except that the business was directionless and basic stuff wasn't getting done (like, say, my employment contract). Eventually there was a bit of an intervention and he was ousted (his dad also owned part of the company), which was badly needed because he was really running things in to the ground, in spite of having built it up in the first place.
> Ubuntu isn't going to stop what they are doing because of Stallman's ideas.
No, but the FSF could be promoting Ubuntu instead of railing against it. If I'm interested in Free Software and find the FSF website then all I get are unpractical solutions.
But what the FSF really should be doing is lobby this kind of thing with governments, schools, corporations and such.
I don't really see how this is valuable, and I see a lot of ways in which this is harmful to the cause. It's not explaining the message very well, it's actively turning people off, and it's preventing some free software from being as useful as it could be.
You can keep long-term goals in mind while also working towards smaller short-term goals. Almost every political party and lobby organisation in the world is doing exactly that.
Here Stallman again rails against Ubuntu. Okay, maybe Ubuntu isn't perfect, but s/Microsoft windows/Ubuntu/ would be quite an improvement, and especially since the 100% free/libre stuff he recommends are caveated to hell it's the only pragmatic/realistic option there is right now – not necessarily Ubuntu itself, but some distro which includes the same firmware, nVidia drivers, and such. And if a lot of people are actually running Ubuntu/Linux you end up having a lot more leverage.
By focusing only on the endpoint you're actually doing more short-term thinking rather than playing the long game.
> The Free Software Foundation was founded in 1985. From there since Free Software has only lost ground. I don't think Stallman would agree that "lack of pragmatism" is really what's stopping things from changing for better.
Or maybe the FSF has absolutely miserably failed at actually getting their message out there?
The Right to Repair movement has been more successful; there's quite a bit of overlap between the concept of Free Software and Right To Repair: both are fundamentally about "I can do to the machine I bought whatever I want!" And it seems both the public and lawmakers are receptive to this argument. Right to Repair hasn't been as successful as I'd like (yet), but a lot more successful than Free Software. It seems to me that part of the blame squarely lies with FSF's inability to actually communicate their message effectively. Open Source has been more successful either.
I never like this kind of externalizing of issues and blame other people/corporations/governments because it's just not helpful. Even if you're 100% correct about all of that, you can't change what other people/organisations do where you have no influence, but you can influence what you do, so it's almost always better to think about "what can I/we do better?" rather than "what can they do better?"
A few years ago I saw an indie game developer recount his experience with Stallman[1]; he doesn't see how he can release his games as Free Software while making a living, pay his rent, pay for his children's education, etc. So he asked Stallman what to do about that.
Stallman's reply? "You should not be making those games, it is unethical."
To say that is non-constructive would be an understatement; it's just shutting down any conversation and exploration and how we can improve things. There are a whole bunch of things one can think of: release the code but keep the assets (graphics, sound, music, etc.) proprietary, release under some sort of "source available" license, keep the core rendering parts proprietary SO/DLLs and release the rest as free software, and maybe a few other things. All of that would be a huge improvement over "100% closed".
But Stallman isn't open to any of that, and because the FSF is still very much Stallman's organisation, neither is the FSF. For at least 20 years the FSF has done nothing except preaching to the choir, and certainly hasn't actually made many significant meaningful every-day improvements. In the above situation the game dev essentially asked was "what is the best way to make my software more free?" and all he got was a rather insulting and condensing shutdown of that conversation before it could even take off.
[1]: I don't have the source for that right now; I think it was somewhere on YouTube. It may have been an interview with Lunduke, but I'm not sure.
I think that's not really an issue for the intended use case: "code that is intended for developers to use as reference, teaching samples, examples, or templates that other developers may modify for their own purposes."
Consider some libfoo, and in libfoo you include example.mylang as a "quickstart" for the common use case, and many people use this as a starting point, modifying it a bit to suit their needs but not much. Technically you should attribute this file/function/class too, but in practice no one does, and no one really cares either.
I've had people ask me to put a license on 2-line Stack Overflow licenses (it's already CC-BY, but people still ask for some reason, I guess to comply with company legal dept.)
It's useful for stuff like that: you typically don't really care what someone does with your fairly simple examples/demos/etc. (which may not even meet the threshold of originality to apply for copyright protection) and whether they attribute it.