muckrights-sans-merde

 bonum fabula frat

### right-to-repair-isnt-about-new-threats-but-old-ones *originally posted:* may 2021 muckrights thinks it can help free software by pretending stallman is against systemd and other ibm-related efforts to take over gnu/linux. this has backfired, because it shows muckrights has not only misrepresented people who wrote for it (as it did earlier this year) but also misrepresented stallmans positions on software: => the-second-biggest-lie-at-muckrights.html => wrong-about-detractors-and-wrong-about-vegans.html > Detractors of RMS love to portray him as not keeping up with new threats or blast him for rejecting "progress". But RMS clearly understands what’s going on => timeline-of-muckrights.html how can muckrights escape being called out on this lie? pretend that anybody who tries is really just attacking stallman (using stallman as a human shield for criticism of muckrights for lying about stallman) so that muckrights can misrepresent his views with impunity, quickly point out that it was really ibm who attacked critics of systemd (when? a year or two ago? what does this have to do with pretending stallman is against it? oh, its a misdirection) and then shifting to a cycle about right-to-repair, which-- while it is a timely subject, is not about "new threats" to free software at all. right-to-repair is about new examples of very old threats to free software. it is first and foremost about non-free software, and legislation that makes it illegal to modify other things that include non-free software. i want to be perfectly clear that i think right-to-repair is a great topic to talk about, as its very highly relevant to free software and it has mainstream traction. right to repair itself is not a topic so old that we can (or ought to) just stop talking about it. on the contrary, even if it were not a very relevant topic right now per se, historical lessons are indeed important too. but lets not pretend that right-to-repair is about new threats to free software. the john deere drm story is from 2015, right around the time that debian was taken over by systemd (it entered debian testing via an update in late 2014, but testing is not release). if youre trying to flee a very failed cycle about stallman and systemd, right-to-repair is a perfect haven to flee to, because the topic is about the same number of years old and actually has new and ongoing support from the mainstream. muckrights talks about systemd all the time now, as it really should have years ago, but was still MOSTLY avoiding the topic in 2018, which i commented on at the time-- its "safe" to protest now, when gnu/linux is already destroyed by it-- but stallman is NOT against it and anybody who says otherwise is selling you a bill of goods. right-to-repair really isnt even a threat at all, its a wonderful response to terrible threats to freedom. it reminds me very much of defective-by-design campaign-wise, except for being mainstream and very possibly promotable with an actual free culture license (dbd foolishly used noderivs licenses year after year, with an absolutely ridiculous and circular justification for doing so). but how old are the "new" threats that right-to-repair addresses? because like so many things muckrights does, i dont think they really come out and say "right-to-repair is about addressing new threats to software freedom" (maybe they do somewhere) but there is certainly this "stallman gets new threats" story followed by some sound refutations of that nonsense, with a right-to-repair cycle right on its heels. again, right-to-repair isnt a new threat, its a new response to very old threats. drm for example, technically predates even the fsf. but lets be reasonable and talk about "modern" drm, based on cryptographic keys (and bearing a comical and uncanny resemblance to ransomware as a business model-- except that your files are held hostage for a fee BEFORE you obtain them, instead of just after). amazon applied that technology to books a decade and a half ago in 2006, and this was a relatively new (and somehow, even more evil) application of drm, which had already been applied to software and music. defectivebydesign was also launched in 2006, incidentally-- but "modern" drm like on the kindle is already decades old, with itunes being launched as early as 2001. how about legislation that makes it a crime to break drm, or to even publish tools for breaking it? that threat to free software goes all the way back at least as far as the dmca in 1998, and as muckrights notes-- stallman himself was protesting that years before defectivebydesign was launched. and tivoisation (where drm intersects with actual free software, not just dmca-like legislation) is more than a decade old now. this doesnt make it irrelevant-- it just isnt new. so IF muckrights is trying to insinuate that right-to-repair has anything to do with new threats to free software, ask why stallman was protesting the laws that criminalise fixing something john deere did in 2015-- laws that go back to the 20th century. is this really a new threat? no, its a broader awareness of a very old threat. and thats a good thing, and since im sure its not a "done deal" in terms of solutions, people should of course keep fighting it. non-free software isnt a "new threat" either, and people should keep fighting that. but the fsf (and stallman) have still failed to keep up with problems even muckrights protests years after the fact-- now that its politically a lot "safer" to do so. muckrights is doing what "journalism" does-- it cant support its own line with facts, so its shifting to a topic it can be right about, and its going to keep peppering its rhetoric with other points it made recently, hoping youll forget just how far off (and dishonest) they were about it, and that youll join them in conflating something theyre ALMOST right about with something they completely lied about. they wouldnt bother doing it if they didnt know it sometimes works. what else is muckrights right about? and how many of those things would it take to magically change the fact that they lied about stallmans position just two days ago? LOOK OVER THERE! THE GOODYEAR BLIMP RUNS NON-FREE SOFTWARE WITH DRM! of course, since 2014 the goodyear "blimp" is actually a zeppelin, so perhaps its time for another round of ibm-are-nazis and dont-mention-that-stallman-supports-the-war. technically, stallman doesnt "support" the war (to make gnu/linux ibm-occupied territory). he simply isnt against it. gnuhomag! dont lets be beastly to the germans, dont lets be mean to ibm. at least you can shtill repair your tractors, ja? => https://muckrights-sans-merde.neocities.org