muckrights-sans-merde
bonum fabula frat
### waiting-for-stallman-is-half-the-problem
other articles:
=> the-delusion-of-a-gnu-linux-community.html the-delusion-of-a-gnu-linux-community
*originally posted:* jun 2021
the other day i was reading http://techrights.org/2021/06/06/risk-of-feature-churn/ "The New Generation of Vendor Lock-in, Even in ‘Open’ Clothing"
i can hardly take the credit for "bringing the systemd debate to muckrights", even though it didnt get started until i was there, because for years people tried to warn ron about the problem. and he sat on it for years--
in 2018 he told me he was "no friend" of systemd when i stated concern, and in 2019 he said he was "neutral" or "apathetic", but i think the words he was looking for were "opportunistic" and "full of fucking shit". but i digress...
ron sat on this all the way through 2014, when he already had plenty of warning. i will be publishing a lot more about that-- because as the above article (correctly) points out, this is NOT just about systemd. its about the takeover of free software, by systemd and everything like it.
for the record, i do not like how he claims this is "open" or "osps". the reason i use the term "filo" (free in license only) is that it strikes at the root of the problem.
thats not the bulk of my complaint at all, but i want to say this first.
"open source proprietary software" does two things that are a mistake. first, it promotes the term "open source", even if it does so in a negative context. i use the phrase in a negative context too, im not against using it in a negative context, but here it is completely muddying the waters when it ought to be stating the real problem.
the phrase "open source proprietary software" continues to imply that open source is fundamentally different from what it turned into. and i dont think theres any evidence for that. at best, open source used to CLAIM to be different.
i do note one exception, for people already using the term BEFORE 1998, when most of what we know as the open source crowd claims it was coined. but in most contexts, "open source" is what osi was doing in 1998, and ever since. and imo it was ALWAYS (at least since 1998, since osi existed) a scam against free software. i know bruce says he didnt intend it that way, and he probably didnt.
note that bruce left in 1999, saying open source had (in just one year) already thoroughly co-opted free software. so when muckrights implies that open source (the osi variety is without question, the one hes talking about) used to be something different, i think hes inadvertently (or rather, carelessly) helping them rewrite history. he claims to be against them doing that, so why not stop helping them? pretending they were ever NOT co-opting (doing serious harm to) free software is letting them off the hook for the very SAME thing he says theyre doing now. but thats ron-- if-by-ron, i call him. if-by-muckrights.
getting back to the point of the article, ron sez:
> Very large and increasingly monolithic projects (lack of modularity, constant changes everywhere) pose a threat to some of the Four Freedoms; while in theory it’s possible to control all the code in practice it’s becoming infeasible and very frequent ‘stable’ releases make that even harder, quite likely by intention
groovy, baby. it almost sounds like hes talking about the gnew project, without actually talking about it:
=> https://wrongwithfreesw.neocities.org/a-sceptics-free-software-dictionary.html
> npi * nebulous programming interface-- a mark that lies somewhere in between an api and clown computing, npis break things that dont need breaking and use bullshit and marketing to justify strategic instability; manipulates downstream projects.
ron did a 40-50 minute video about this dictionary, but the latest version is on ewwfs, which he pretends not to know the address of. the address is on his "own" server, but i guess he cant find it even though he somehow reads it anyway. maybe hes psychic? or maybe hes in the matrix? i think they still dial in to specific locations though.
anyway, "npi" was coined by the chief gnewsance, though (as he would tell you) i was talking about these problems more than a year ago myself. and i wouldnt even claim to be the first.
the muckrights article is really about npis.
generally i say, the more the merrier-- more people talking about this problem is of course, a good thing. i complain when ron does it, for the same reason i complain when apple does bsd even though i generally like bsd. its because ron is a monopolist, who schmoozes and bullshits and cycles back and forth between calling a spade a spade and then calling it a diamond or a club.
a kernel of truth in the hands of ron is like a statistic in the hands of a politician-- or a freely-licensed library in the hands of "open source". you know damned well what theyre going to do with it next.
but thats why muckrights-sans-merde exists, to deal with this sort of thing-- and hopefully, to let people know whats really going on over there.
but where is he going with this now?
> WE NEED to talk about an issue that more and more people have spoken about in recent years.
right, so he says its not new. and it isnt-- people have been talking about this since 2014, but the terms keep getting more and more refined so theyre harder and harder, though not impossible, for people to bullshit about.
> We’ve long written about feature churn, too frequent a release cycle, OSPS and all that jazz. In a nutshell, for those who don’t know the basics, there are some projects that call themselves “Open Source” but are very much akin to “Proprietary Software” (the “PS” in “OSPS”).
careful there, now youre defending too many of the same people youre criticising. thats what you get for still riding the fence when the problem is very straightforward and has continued for years (with systemd) or decades (with open source).
> Chrome (or Chromium for openwashing’s sake) is one example and systemd is another. Linux is also released very often (RC every week, typically late on Sunday, and a final release every 6-8 weeks), it’s extremely large (the same is true for Chrome and systemd, which had over 36,000 files last year), so prospects of forking are slim to none.
oh, the prospects of forking linux are slim to none? sounds like you read the gnu/linux delusion.
dont worry folks, hes still going to be promoting debian five years from now. and as ron ought to infer from his own fucking article, debian MIGHT get rid of systemd in 5 years (it just as likely will not) but even if it does, this is not a problem limited to systemd.
debian, with absolutely no respect for users left, will just replace systemd with some other filo, npi bullshit. ron either hasnt figured that out, doesnt care, or wont bother telling you until *does quick math* (2020-2015)+2021... 2026, and then he will just wait for them to fix that, too. as if they fucking care about any of this.
ron talks about the corporate takeover, the coup, but he wont acknowledge that debian and gnome are as much of a problem as the linux foundation and the gnome foundation. i have plenty to say about THAT as well. a grep of both stallman letters, open and support, will do though. also ron could try reading his own irc channel (which he posts in constantly) once in a while: http://techrights.org/irc-archives/irc-log-techrights-200521.html
> MinceR XRevan86: SPI has close ties with debian, allegedly also with systemd May 20 19:00
ron talks about open source being the problem, then he backpedals from there, and he certainly never gets to the part (or, he gets farther away from) where the coup is a takeover OF free software BY open source. he starts painting it more and more like its just a takeover of open source by corporations.
listen here, you lying hack: its a takeover OF free software, BY corporations, USING open source as a gateway. its not a takeover OF open source by corporations. that happened at least one, if not TWO decades ago. open source probably turned "zombie" before you reached drinking age (in the states at least) and it doesnt change back and forth, the way you do.
free software is becoming more and more like open source, and ron wants to pretend its something happening "over there", not right here where we are. he should know better, but then the fsf supposedly "drove out" the coup. where did they go? back to the gnu project, where they were already spreading to.
the coup occupied the fsf-- you can prove that with muckrights articles alone. they started to spread to the gnu project, but its very difficult to say how long thats gone on for.
all the coup did was fall back to the gnu project, but thats hardly a victory for us because the gnu project is more important than the fsf. its a bit like saying "dont worry, all the enemy troops have left the battlefield. we only have to worry about them in our own homes now". ron, you silly fuck.
> It would take a massive scandal to induce a reorganisation large enough for momentum (like Oracle buying projects it has no intention of properly maintaining, hence LibreOffice exists).
systemd already absorbs things it has no intention of properly maintaining, then it just moves on to the next thing. and heres a guy who used to work for microsoft (they do this sort of shit all the time) telling you so just a couple weeks ago: http://techrights.org/irc-archives/irc-log-techrights-180521.html
> For now, there's a correct way to do something that's buried in the kernel somewhere, rotting, probably to be removed at some point, and a systemd way of doing it that "uses the same system management style" which is also rotting because the people maintaining systemd have no interest in actually maintaining any of the shit that they write and are off to the next thing. (Which is why there are no stable release May 18 14:36
so heres the crux of it, which will be used to make other points based on the bleeding obvious:
"the people maintaining systemd have no interest in actually maintaining any of the shit that they write..."
THEY have no interest. neither do you, (you said so yourself in 2019, after lying about it the year before) but i will get to that.
> The benefits espoused in relation to Free software are mostly obsoleted, except if you want to remove some malicious feature and repeat for each release cycle.
thats very true, of course.
> If this is the best we have, what level of freedom are we truly enjoying/exercising at the level of studying, modifying, and redistributing code?
thats a good question, ron. why did you spend all of 2014 (you knew, even then) through 2018 sitting on this story? i know exactly what your excuse USED to be.
youve said that it was because you didnt like the wars around it.
youve said that it was because you were focused on other topics (for FOUR YEARS? no you werent).
a year later, you said you were neutral or apathetic.
NOW you say it matters? why? because other people are saying so, and you dont want people to realise you dont actually a give a flying shit about any of this? (ding ding ding ding ding ding ding)
since the beginning of april, youve gone back and forth several times (its only been a couple months ffs) like the weather on "whether" the coup has failed or needs to be talked about. are there two of you? (maybe theres another face on the other side of your head, i dont think weve ever seen the back of it in your videos).
so youre going to back and forth on the coup, then complain about their filo npi flagships, systemd and rust? HOW LONG until you go back on that too? judging from the article, about 2 minutes:
> Free software will need to cope with or handle this issue. A good start would be at least talking about those sorts of issues. Without talking about them there will be no widespread recognition. Recently, as in last week, Richard Stallman alluded to Rust as moving to fast. He said it would help to fork or branch out Rust (maybe call it “crust” to avoid trademark-related restrictions), then maintain that instead. So it seems clear Stallman is at least vaguely aware of those things.
i was sure you had to be making this up, after i caught you lying about his position on systemd. and that WAS a lie, by the way-- a complete fabrication. stallmans position on systemd hasnt changed in 5 years, and you can find it on his website. you wont find a talk where stallman talks about systemd-- not because he doesnt want to bother, as ron says-- but because he doesnt think its a problem. at all.
so this is a pretty direct refutation (a challenge, if you will-- but ron is a LYING COWARD and will only face this challenge with more lies and fabrications) to the idea that stallman is "aware" of this problem.
all the same, the hard-to-believe part about rust is partly true. its not that stallman PERSONALLY thinks rust is moving too fast, its that other people tell him its "unstable" (which it certainly is) and he simply suggested that there could be a stable version and a development version.
> A good start would be at least talking about those sorts of issues.
yeah, being honest about them wouldnt hurt, either!
now ron has a fucking phd, and says he uses free software for a living. if only that were a guarantee that he would be logical and show integrity, alas... (hes not a medical doctor, so no hippocratic oath that im aware of-- but he does work in the medical field, as a glorified statistician and 3d modeler. but i have it on good authority that he DOES NO HARM to those 3d computer models!)
getting back to what the baron said (which i know mincer will corroborate, because its common knowledge)
"the people maintaining systemd have no interest in actually maintaining any of the shit that they write..."
what about the people who maintain rust, are they any different? lets just quote the baron again, from the day before/yesterdays logs (the logs for the 7th should have gone up in the past hour).
> Rust was a way to create a resume and then leave the company. Jun 06 23:58
to me it sounds like the people maintaining rust have about as much interest in maintaining any of the shit as the systemd people. so just like oliva said (probably only to imply that everybody didnt fucking know this already, which of course they did) its really not just about systemd at all.
so-- nobody wants to maintain rust. nobody wants to maintain systemd either.
but stallman says that a fork of rust would help, if we tell him its unstable. you know, a stable version-- not just a development version.
that doesnt really solve anything, though, does it? because the problem of rust being unstable is only a problem if people use rust.
back when you were bn, you had a REAL solution to this. you should know that the solution now and the solution in 2006 is the same fucking solution-- but its not what you propose anymore (thats because youre a sellout and a charlatan, but whatever, im not going to convince you to be honest about it).
or i should say that in 2006 BRUCE PERENS had a real solution to this, and you and shawn jumped on that bandwagon with a website dedicated to the boycott, eh?
what was that solution, in 2006, ron?
DONT USE MONO!
DONT USE NOVELL!
ring a bell, at all? just like i said a year ago, HISTORY IS IMPORTANT. you ignore your own history, and youve spent so many years (5 or 6 at least) telling people bullshit-- or simply leaving out the important information.
and then waffling like a motherfucker.
by "waffling", i mean you spend years not saying anything in an article, when its demonstrably provable (oh im getting to that too, but not in THIS article) that you fucking knew better, then in 2018 you FEIGNED caring but in 2019 you claimed apathy. which is it? who cares, everything you say is bullshit, even when its (technically, or partially) true. all good lies build on a truth anyway, and youre a (sort of) good liar.
THEN when people actually want to boycott things that cause just as much harm as mono, you tell them not to.
i guess to be fair, it wasnt your website to start with. but youve been the main person behind the wheel since like 2007 or 2008, so whats your excuse?
oh, right-- lies and bullshit and rewriting your own fucking history. the best excuses in the world.
like i was saying-- 2006 and 2007, did you wait for stallman and the fsf to boycott mono?
NO! you did NOT! you promoted someone elses (bruce perens) boycott, and LATER the fsf got on board.
its what you should have done SEVEN OR EIGHT years later too, in 2014. but did you do that? NO!
heck, if youd simply done EXACTLY the same thing a second time with perens (waiting for him to start a boycott, i mean) then he was already calling debian (at the very least, systemd in debian) out when you were still apathetic! i guess you really HAVE changed then-- at least muckrights has.
you once told people to use gnote because it wasnt mono encumbered. when did devuan first become installable from an iso? 2015! when youd already known about the problems of systemd (mincer told you-- LOTS of people told you!) FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR!
so in 2019 you told people you were considering devuan. i mean, devuan was already bullshit by then.
heres what i did while you were sitting on your arse...
first of all, i installed devuan. in early 2015, when it became available as an iso. then i migrated. i know, i know-- its different for a server! your website depended on so much bullshit that wasnt compatible (but thats just it-- its bullshit-- its all unstable npis, thats an aspect of the coup you claim to know about, but waffle on repeatedly).
but thats beside the point, isnt it? you could have installed devuan on one or more of those 6 screens youve got, you silly cunt. http://techrights.org/2020/12/03/figosdev-on-debian/
i also installed a FULLY-FREE version of devuan (gnuinos) and i even liked it better. this is for those shits at maslinux.es who claimed that systemd is mainly a problem for people that dont give a shit about fully-free distros (FUCK you, maslinux!)
i gave money to devuan, which i shouldnt have (i gave more money, and even faster equipment, to refracta, which is a project from the guy that headed devuan live).
i did extensive research in removing and even automating the removal of systemd, which was designed to be FAR more accessible to laymen / noobs than anything debian made for remastering. i even got a non-programmer to create bootable isos with it.
oh-- and i shared all that with you and wrote over 100 articles for you, on that and MANY related topics, which you thanked me for by lying about and smearing me when i left, THANK YOU very much, you fucking cunt.
again, WHAT did you do about systemd? in 2018 you lied and insinuated that you gave a shit-- in 2019 you outright claimed apathy, and sometime between 2015 and 2017 (dont worry about the exact year, ive got notes on all of this for the timeline) you lied about why!
most of your readers dont have a server anyway, so whether or not devuan was suitable for YOUR server is a bit moot, no? all you had to do is see what you COULD replace. but youre a debian apologist, and you were (in your own words) apathetic about this even in 2019 (despite what you told me personally in 2018). http://techrights.org/2019/10/23/devuan/
2006: do a boycott!
2007: mono is evil! use gnote!
2008: finally, ubuntu is getting rid of this too!
^ only 2006 is actually aligned accurately here, this is true to the history as the gist of it nonetheless
and on and on and on... but:
2014:
2015:
2016:
2017:
2018: oh im no friend of this, i just love debian so much so (shhhhh)
2019: "I myself have been more or less neutral or at least apathetic on the matter for many years."
im sure im taking that out of context! (wtf is the context?)
2020: publishing articles other people write about it, pretending to give a shit
2021: FUCK GUYS, THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT!
cmon, youre a bullshitter who doesnt give a shit and just wants pageviews.
this is far more important than you just being full of shit, though.
because what youre promoting WILL NOT WORK.
it doesnt actually matter if stallman realises that an unstable development tool (language) should have a "stable version". i mean, that beats the alternative, it simply doesnt change anything by itself. it takes SO MUCH more than that.
and i really think you only say it to distract people from you lying-- not simply being mistaken-- about his position on systemd. you defintely want people to believe you care about this, even if you dont.
nobody who works on rust (or systemd) cares if it is stable. the instability is the very reason they use it!
nobody who works on applications (that we depend on-- important qualifier there) written in rust care if rust is stable either.
WHAT DO YOU THINK IS GOING TO HAPPEN, RON? you think someone is going to make a stable version of rust (what would that be, just pick a good one and add security updates? what should we call it, pale rust?) AND THEN MOZILLA IS GOING TO BE COMPATIBLE WITH IT?
no, mozilla is going to continue to follow the instability. so the stable version of rust will accomplish roughly zero, unless you really WANT to use a stable version of a language that is designed primarily for the purpose of being unstable.
now, im not saying a stable version of rust would be ALL BAD. useless, most certainly ineffective, but not all bad. it would (after all) be better than rust.
by the way, did stallman mention getting it off github, too? probably not-- but "we" (that is, you) are going to imply it later, im sure?
THE SOLUTION IN 2021 is the same solution that your own website promoted in 2006, you fuck.
its the same thing WE (that is, NOT you) were talking about in 2014-- boycotting systemd and everything like it, getting as far the fuck away from it as possible. it would be nice if you joined us, except youre a liar who just wants pageviews and never really gave a shit about this-- and you never will, either.
you have the same problem as the fsf-- you have ignored your community-- people who actually care about their freedom. mincer in particular, (and not only mincer) has warned you about systemd CONSISTENTLY since EARLY 2014, while i didnt even know it existed until later that year.
the baron was a kool-aid drinking systemd cheerleader early on, but even he says "the people maintaining systemd have no interest in actually maintaining any of the shit that they write and are off to the next thing." therefore even he understands this better than stallman does (alas). and dont you dare tell him i said hes a waffler, because changing your mind about something from wrong to right then maintaining that position is hardly a crime. thats not what you do.
better late than never, BUT ONLY IF YOU ACTUALLY MEAN IT, you know? i know your plan at home is to wait until debian moves onto the next unmaintainable shit. its not like youre going to use alpine on your desktops. instead you just spread fud about openbsd-- fud that TWO SECONDS of moderately skilled web searching would fix for you:
=> https://muckrights-sans-merde.neocities.org/no-you-dont-need-to-run-startx-in-openbsd.html
but lets be reasonable about this-- WHY is it so important to differentiate between the effectiveness (youre a statistician in the medical industry-- SURELY, i mean HOPEFULLY, efficacy is an important factor in whatever you study, OTHERWISE what is the fucking point of it?) of a boycott vs waiting more than half a decade for a GLIMMER of mutual aims from the chief gnuisance?
it matters, because THAT IS HOW FREE SOFTWARE WORKS.
what? HOW does free software work? i am so glad you asked.
first, stallman creates free software. okay, that parts done. step two is a big deal.
then, other people give a shit about it too. we are already there. progress! (at least it was in the 1990s, now it is 2021-- of course we still need people to give a shit. too bad i guess, that you arent one who does).
wait, theres more! after that, people help stallman work on solutions-- and find new problems.
then they tell him about those problems.
finally, stallman tells the world about those NEW problems-- and the fsf (in theory) HELPS him tell the world about those new problems.
heres the best part: we go back, to "other people give a shit about it too".
the whole point of getting stallman to care about this issue is in the hopes that people will give a shit what he thinks, then do something.
but youre missing a brilliant fucking shortcut here! with novell, other people cared about it BEFORE the fsf did!
people can care BEFORE stallman does.
and guess what? they ALREADY do!
so what are you doing with your bullshit? we are going BACKWARDS, from: ."oot ti tuoba tihs a evig elpoep rehto" ot ,kcab og ew :trap tseb eht sereh... .smelborp wen esoht tuoba dlrow eht llet mih SPLEH )yroeht ni( fsf eht dna --smelborp WEN esoht tuoba dlrow eht sllet namllats ,yllanif
(i bet xrevan can translate that from russian) to BEFORE stallman tells people about it. because you are still putting words in his mouth, even if this time its NOT a total fabrication. you lied about systemd entirely. this time youre only stretching the truth and twisting what was actually said. supposedly for a good cause, but stallman STILL doesnt need you pretending he has positions that he doesnt have.
if anybody is going to pretend stallman is an ally against this problem, it ought to be someone who actually gives a shit about the problem themselves. since you are (obviously) apathetic and simply being an opportunist, you should note that most of the people against systemd and npis ALREADY KNOW that stallman is apathetic about it too.
i mean, he DID say that a stable version of rust could be made-- when the problem was posed to him. that does not mean he has a real position on this. why pretend he does? it would certainly be nice to have him supporting this, but havent people told enough lies about things stallman said, already?
if you think something is a problem, you can (as most people who ACTUALLY care already have) actually skip to the part where people give a shit what stallman says, then DO SOMETHING about it.
when your own community is exploring non-systemd options (as they were half a decade ago, as i was, since installing debian kfreebsd in 2014-- the first alternative i tried to debian with systemd was in fact, debian with bsd! then devuan, months later) you could have joined them.
you could have decided to act like an activist, instead of just sitting and waiting (FOR YEARS!) to see which way the wind blew.
but the TRUTH is-- and here is why this article drips with venom for you-- youre STILL telling people (subtly) dont worry! wait (with me) to see which way the wind blows! this is going to solve itself!
```
MinceR i'm dealing with moving to some BSD Mar 08 19:21
schestowitz__ they cannot pull it off Mar 08 19:21
schestowitz__ MinceR: OK, fair enough Mar 08 19:21
MinceR and then i can watch the mafias kill what's left of Linux and GNU without being affected Mar 08 19:21
schestowitz__ figosdev did that too Mar 08 19:21
```
```
schestowitz__ we can deal with systemd as vendor lock-in later Mar 08 19:20
```
that was three months ago to the very day, and it would be great if you genuinely gave a shit now. but imagine if someone had said that about mono (or moonlight, or any application that needed mono) in 2006.
what would you have called them? a troll? a shill? a paid lobbyist?
youve really changed your tune, havent you? from boycotts to "wait another 5 years" or "lets just talk about this." or wait for stallman.
while you slag off people who actually spend years doing work and trying various different ways to get away from it, so they actualy know what theyre talking about when they advise people. and you just manipulate (lie to) people to do the work for you. you dont even have a consistent position, you just waffle back and forth, and schmooze people. it doesnt mean anything to you at all. then after all that, you take the credit and say "we" did this:
http://techrights.org/2020/08/17/status-by-association/
> Tall tales and stretching facts (to the point of seeking status based on other people’s achievements, including Linus Torvalds’) are the hallmark of sociopathic behaviour, compensating for a lack of personal merit
your words.
```
schestowitz what did Kat Walsh do to them?!!??! Mar 26 11:49
schestowitz She's awesome Mar 26 11:49
schestowitz we suggested her as successor to RMS Mar 26 11:49
```
no, you did not. youre so pathological its not enough to borrow credit when im right, you need to make unwarranted claims on my mistakes? you also claimed "we" counted gnu projects with regards to github. not "we", that was me.
however, just as calling it gnu is not about credit, neither is your bullshit about how "we" counted these projects. the problem with you "borrowing" credit for that, is you then misrepresented the findings-- to make them fit your narrative. you lied again, but to do so, you pretended to be a participant. it was this sort of misrepresentation that i left muckrights over. and you claim it was a solitary, petty disagreement in irc over "nutrition". you absolute shit.
but you werent a participant THEN, and you arent one now. you have more in common with jim zemlin than pamela jones; only zemlin gets paid in money and you get what? pageviews. thats good enough i guess, when youre planning to retire before 50. what, you couldnt have shared a little of that with devuan, or even with the fsf? perhaps during your retirement years.
you probably save enough money on web hosting, yeah? and youre still with bt, even though youve bitched and moaned about them for years-- you even called for a bt boycott on your own website, and what? you couldnt even bother to join YOUR OWN BOYCOTT? you think there arent enough alternatives where you live? (its not like the states, where everybody can choose between BOTH kinds of internet-- the cable monopoly, AND, sometimes-- the fibre monopoly).
MAYBE STALLMAN could suggest they make ANOTHER ISP! then you can write a story (or a few) about it-- and keep using bt just the same. its the muckrights way.
=> https://muckrights-sans-merde.neocities.org/bt-should-sponsor-muckrights.html
youre a fucking hack, ron. a lying, fucking hack.
happy hacking, motherfucker.
=> https://muckrights-sans-merde.neocities.org