Late last year, president Obama signed a law that makes it possible to indefinitely detain terrorist suspects without any form of trial or due process. Peaceful protesters in Occupy movements all over the world have been labelled as terrorists by the authorities. Initiatives like SOPA promote diligent monitoring of communication channels. Thirty years ago, when Richard Stallman launched the GNU project, and during the three decades that followed, his sometimes extreme views and peculiar antics were ridiculed and disregarded as paranoia - but here we are, 2012, and his once paranoid what-ifs have become reality.
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Member since:2012-01-03
Right. Exactly.
I have no idea what the connection is between SOPA/NDAA and open vs. closed software. I don't know how using Android is going to help you not get tracked. This all makes zero sense.
Ultimately you have to trust somebody. If you want to trust the open-source development community you can do that. If you want to trust Apple or Google you can do that to.
Trusting Apple at least has the advantage that you know who they are and can be held accountable.
I don't see any valid argument here that Stallman's views have been justified at all.
Member since:2005-06-29
If something's open source, you can at least check if you're being tracked. You can't do that with iOS or Windows Phone 7.
THAT is the gist. Open source allows you to circumvent arbitrary bullshit restrictions. Closed source does not. It's pretty elementary.
Member since:2012-01-03
Member since:2012-01-03
I'll try again. Prev. message was incomplete, due to my stu pid defective keyboard. Here I'll try again:
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I was scrolling down the thread and wondering why noone seem ed to notice the obvious flaw in this article - that there is NO connection between the bad laws and anything rms ever predicted!
It never does mention excactly what rms said 30 years ago t hat was an accurate prediction of the future.
Neither does it explain what these laws have to do with fre e software and I start to suspect that the author of the a rticle does not have enough technical knowledge to know that all these bad laws would be perfectly possible in a world with only free software.
Member since:2006-12-16
Agreed. This thread is a bit silly imho. I like RMS, I like his ideals. But using open source software will make jack squat difference to the government in question arresting you for whatever reason it deems fit, and detaining you indefinitely, without a fair trial, for whatever reason it deems fit.
Oh, and I'm pretty confident that Linux has a nice backdoor in it just like OS X and Windows do. The only O/S that I'd trust to not have such a backdoor is GNU Hurd. Linux long ago lost my respect when Linus rudely thumbed RMS by refusing to move to GPL 3 with BS reasons.
Linux is powerful, configurable, but user friendly it is not. And anyone telling you that is full of shyte. It still requires knowledge of computer systems and how they work, and security diligence that your ordinary computer user severely lacks.
Dave
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Member since:
2005-09-21
The problem is not software being open or closed, the problem is a political one. Who cares if you're using iOS or Android to access the internet if SOPA leads to a censored web? Who cares if you run linux when you are detained for attending an occupy protest?
The connection here makes no sense. You can build your own cell phone from scratch, write every single line of code yourself, and as soon as you connect to the cell network you can be tracked, and your information can be filtered.
This is nonsense. Whether you use OSX or Windows or Linux makes no difference whatsoever. Don't like what's being done by the government? Organize against them and vote them out. Your software choice has exactly zero impact.