Move blog posts out of the tree.

author: Chris Xiong <chirs241097@gmail.com> 2024-06-22 19:59:16 -0400
committer: Chris Xiong <chirs241097@gmail.com> 2024-06-22 19:59:16 -0400
commit: 4e1a29cab8d31cff30d88d2dfc0f526372fc33bd (patch)
tree: 7a0c9b5d4a57ed734018b447eafdf5f51ab43151 /blog/post/2018-05-18.html
parent: e81928f76ab105c65a0a0997c289f0f521589128 (diff)
download: web-4e1a29cab8d31cff30d88d2dfc0f526372fc33bd.tar.xz
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 307 deletions
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-		<ul id="panellist">
-			<li><a href="/"><h1>Chrisoft</h1></a></li>
-			<li><a href="/blog"><h2>Blog</h2></a></li>
-			<li><a href="#"><h3 id="title">Ideology vs Pragmatism &amp;c.</h3></a></li>
-			<li><span>Tags</span>
-			<ul id="tagslist">
-			<li><a href="/blog/list/sophistry/">sophistry</a></li><li><a href="/blog/list/garbage/">garbage</a></li></ul>
-			</li>
-			<li id="tocouter">
-				<span>Table of Contents</span>
-				<ul id="tocroot">
-				<li><a class="toctarg" href="#tocanch0">Preface</a></li><li><a class="toctarg" href="#tocanch1">Ideology vs Pragmatism</a></li><li><a class="toctarg" href="#tocanch2">Free Software vs "Normies"</a></li><li><a class="toctarg" href="#tocanch3">"Free" vs "Open Source"</a></li><li><a class="toctarg" href="#tocanch4">Free software in China</a></li><li><a class="toctarg" href="#tocanch5">Monetization of Free Software</a></li><li><a class="toctarg" href="#tocanch6">Final words</a></li></ul>
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-	<div id="content">
-		<h2 id="titleh" class="TText" style="font-wight:normal;">Ideology vs Pragmatism &amp;c.</h2>
-		<div id="datetags" class="TText" style="margin-bottom:1em;">2018-05-18<br>#sophistry #garbage</div>
-		<hr><div id="article" class="TText">
-<article>
-<h2 id="tocanch0" class="tvis">Preface</h2>
-<p>
-Born in the 90s, when almost every piece of software around was
-proprietary, I felt *exteremely* lucky that I can now power my life using
-(mostly) free software. Still, I might never be able to understand the case
-in the 70s, in which, according to Richard Stallman, every piece of software
-is basically free.
-</p>
-<h2 id="tocanch1" class="tvis">Ideology vs Pragmatism</h2>
-<p>
-There are Linux distros<a id="n1" href="#note1" class="note">[1]</a>
-whose software repository contains free software only (e.g. Trisquel &amp;
-Parabola). There are also distros that doesn't care much about licenses
-(e.g. ArchLinux). Some distros falls between the two extremes: Debian
-has a <code>main</code> section which is entirely made up of free software,
-but it also has <code>contrib</code> and <code>non-free</code>
-<a id="n2" href="#note2" class="note">[2]</a> sections in their repository, which can be added to the system
-quite easily.
-</p>
-<p>
-To most of us who do not have a requirement on every single piece of 
-software being free, we still have to use non-free components -- even to
-make the toaster<a id="n3" href="#note3" class="note">[3]</a> fully working. For
-example, non-free blobs in the Linux kernel and drivers. Using "free" distros
-on these computers essentially cripple the core functionality of that
-computer. If most users require non-free components, it makes sense that
-the distro providers include them in the software repository. As a matter
-of fact, I haven't met any user of a "free" distro outside of GNU.
-<a id="n4" href="#note4" class="note">[4]</a>
-</p>
-<p>
-Using a distro that provides proprietary software should not be considered
-a sin to free software.
-Actually it's a huge step towards freedom in today's world dominated by
-proprietary software. In order to remind the user of this, it is the
-responsibitliy for the distro provider to tell the user about the benefits
-of free software and advocate them contributing to it.
-</p>
-<p>
-Since I've got no mysophobia of proprietary software personally, I don't
-really care about installing proprietary software on my mostly free system.
-I prefer using free software whenever one is available. But if the use of
-free software results in crippling the core functionality (e.g. removing
-firmware blobs from the kernel causing WLAN cards made by Intel not
-working), I may compromise and install a few pieces of proprietary software
-(instead of using an external WLAN card like RMS).
-<a id="n5" href="#note5" class="note">[5]</a>
-</p>
-<h2 id="tocanch2" class="tvis">Free Software vs "Normies"</h2>
-<p>
-The idea of free software won't spread widely if it fails on the "normies".
-Everything about free software is a circlejerk of us <a href="https://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html">hackers</a>
-if we ignore the "normies". Sadly that is just the case right now.
-</p>
-<p>
-The major reason that free software fail to become daily driver of most
-people is that probably most free software targets at "mega-nerds" instead
-of the vast amount of computer "normies". These "normies" just use their
-computers either to get their office work done or to browse the web
-(sometimes both). In this sense, free software often offer terrible
-experience: Linux distributions, if not pre-installed by device vendor,
-often have bad out-of-box experience (either missing driver or firmware,
-or the software requiring too much tweaks to make it actually usable).
-Another example is window manager: the most popular window manager used
-by desktop Linux users is i3, whose default interface is obscure to new
-users and needs a lot of configuration before it suits the user. Only
-people that are really keen on tweaking would do that.
-</p>
-<p>
-Things are changing though. Some free software makers, for example the
-GNOME Fundation, are striving to make free software more user-friendly
-and fool-proof. They recently removed the ability to run executables
-directly in the file manager to prevent the user from accently running
-a malicious script that destroys their computer.
-<a id="n6" href="#note6" class="note">[6]</a>
-But in my opinion the components should remain customizable for the users
-who "knows what they are doing".
-</p>
-<h2 id="tocanch3" class="tvis">"Free" vs "Open Source"</h2>
-<p>
-Richard Stallman has made multiple statements on how he dislikes the term
-"Open Source". I pretty much simply repeat one of his points here.
-</p>
-<p>
-"Free" and "Open Source" has a large part in common: in fact, being "free"
-requires the software to be "open source". However the idea laying below
-is very different: The term "open source" is currently being abused by
-gigantic companies as a weasel word to avoid using "free". They often use
-free component in their proprietary products and doesn't want to remind the
-user that there is a free counterpart that doesn't take the freedom from
-them. A famous example of this is Google Chrome and
-Chromium. <a id="n7" href="#note7" class="note">[7]</a> Similarly, Microsoft "loves" Linux because it is "open source",
-not because it is "free".<a id="n8" href="#note8" class="note">[8]</a>
-</p>
-<p>
-On the other hand, Linus seems to be at the opposite end of it.
-<a id="n9" href="#note9" class="note">[9]</a>
-Pleased to learn that this world is never lack of diversity.
-</p>
-<h2 id="tocanch4" class="tvis">Free software in China</h2>
-<p>
-Free software is not having a good time in China:
-</p>
-<ul>
-<li>
-As Chinese use two distinct words for "free" as in beer and "free" as in
-freedom, we should have faced less problems than the English-speaking
-community. Sadly, almost all tranlators used the word for free beer when
-translating "free software".
-</li>
-<li>
-"Thanks" to the crappy copyright law in China, pirating software and
-reverse engineering is explictly allowed with some restrictions, making
-free software a lot less known to the general public
-<a id="n10" href="#note10" class="note">[10]</a>.
-That same crappy copyright law also gave chance to massive GPL violations.
-Examples: <a href="https://linux-sunxi.org/GPL_Violations">AllWinner</a>,
-<a href="https://www.xda-developers.com/gplv2-and-its-infringement-by-xiaomi/">XiaoMi</a>
-and <a href="https://www.xda-developers.com/have-you-paid-your-linux-kernel-source-license-fee/">MediaTek</a><a id="n11" href="#note11" class="note">[11]</a>.
-</li>
-<li>
-As China wasn't actually involved in the software industry until proprietary
-software has almost taken the whole thing, there are misconceptions
-regarding free software in the Chinese community. For example, the 
-definition of 'source code' in <i>A Dictionary of Current Chinese</i>
-claims "protecting the source code helps to lower the chance of being
-hacked".
-</li>
-<li>
-Software engineering college in China only teach the process of proprietary
-software engineering. Although they utilize free software a lot through
-out the college, they do not promote the use of free software for 'serious
-work', often putting an emphasis on the strengths of proprietary software.
-</li>
-</ul>
-<p>
-As currently the entire Chinese software industry is really addicted (and
-devoted) to AI, ML, IoT and their 'made in China' nonsense, chance of
-solving these problems seems bleak. Also Chinese doesn't do stuff that
-makes no money, but ...
-</p>
-<h2 id="tocanch5" class="tvis">Monetization of Free Software</h2>
-<p>
-... free software <i>can</i> make money. Ethically.
-</p>
-<p>
-By saying ethically I am not promoting the act of getting a maga-sponsor
-and just doing anything they requested. The only ethical way for free
-software to monetize is probably paid support and donation. Red Hat is a
-well-known company that made sheer amount of money out of free software.
-<sup><s>Sarcasm. You should have known it.</s></sup>
-However, not everyone would succeed following that route (even Microsoft
-failed to figure out how to make it work /s). Thus the choice for the vast
-number of smaller free software projects would be donation. So why is
-accepting donation a good idea?
-</p>
-<ul>
-<li>The user donates what ever they want (money, hardware, code,
-translation etc.) voluntarily, and...</li>
-<li>There's no cap on donation amount, so those who got the fortune may
-donate <a href="https://dot.kde.org/2018/02/19/kde-receives-200000-usd-donation-pineapple-fund">a good deal of stuff</a>.</li>
-<li>Those who don't yet have the ability to donate would not be triggered.
-More over, the spirit of "free as in freedom" remains intact.
-</li>
-</ul>
-<p>
-But when things come to money, people starts getting greedy.
-Don't let your greed ruin the entire project.
-</p>
-<h2 id="tocanch6" class="tvis">Final words</h2>
-<p>
-This article is full of my immature thoughts and rants. Fortunately due to
-the low popularity of this site, they would not be exposed too much.
-Writing such a long article is really a pain in my ass though.
-</p>
-<p>
-If you have different opinions, please consider
-<a href="/#about">telling me about it</a> and probably correcting me if I
-made a mistake.
-</p>
-</article>
-<!--
-vim: syntax=html
--->
-</div><br><hr>
-		<div class="TText" id="notediv" style="font-size:80%;"><span class="TText"><a id="note1" href="#n1">[1]</a>: By saying "Linux distros" in this article,
-I am refering to GNU/Linux distributions, except Alpine Linux.<br></span><span class="TText"><a id="note2" href="#n2">[2]</a>: They use their very own guideline (DFSG) to determine whether
-a piece of software is free or not. The most famous difference between
-DFSG and GNU's guideline is that according to DFSG, GFDL is a nonfree
-license, which, in my opinion, is pretty ridiculous.
-<i>Such ideology, much hilarious.</i>
-<br></span><span class="TText"><a id="note3" href="#n3">[3]</a>: i.e. computer<br></span><span class="TText"><a id="note4" href="#n4">[4]</a>: There's one exception: Pure OS from Purism, which is tailored for
-their Librem devices. So it runs without proprietary software on their
-devices just find. Of course I haven't seen one of those either because
-I live in China. But I expect my next laptop to be a Librem 13 as long as
-they improve the battery life and make it thinner -- at least on par with the
-ThinkPad X line products.<br></span><span class="TText"><a id="note5" href="#n5">[5]</a>:  Yup I may never program OpenGL on a libreboot-ed ThinkPad T400
-or X200. Those ThinkPads were a classic but perform pretty bad whenever
-I do CPU-intense jobs.
-<br></span><span class="TText"><a id="note6" href="#n6">[6]</a>: 
-This is half truth, half sarcasm. It <i>does</i> make nautilus fool-proof
-(kind of).
-GNOME is always removing customizability from their desktop environment
-recently, which I can't tell is good or not. This indeed reveals the
-dictatorial decision-making process inside the development cycle.
-<b>However, <a href="https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/commit/ce73de0c98f1d32cdafc40775ee59692f5a7288d">
-this change has been reverted a week ago</a>. Cringy.</b>
-<br></span><span class="TText"><a id="note7" href="#n7">[7]</a>: Chromium is actually a pretty nasty example of free
-software: it contains tracking code from Google. Efforts have been made to
-strip those from the browser. The resulting product is called "Iridium".
-<br></span><span class="TText"><a id="note8" href="#n8">[8]</a>: Probably because Microsoft doesn't know
-how to make profit with free software.<br></span><span class="TText"><a id="note9" href="#n9">[9]</a>: 
-<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw58LZTuZjA">a</a>
-<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b89fKsT1i7s">b</a>
-<br></span><span class="TText"><a id="note10" href="#n10">[10]</a>: also making China an ideal place to reverse engineer something /s.
-<br></span><span class="TText"><a id="note11" href="#n11">[11]</a>: Taiwan (whether a part of
-China or not. No politics here.) has better environment for free software in
-general, but still horrible.<br></span></div>
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author	Chris Xiong <chirs241097@gmail.com>	2024-06-22 19:59:16 -0400
committer	Chris Xiong <chirs241097@gmail.com>	2024-06-22 19:59:16 -0400
commit	4e1a29cab8d31cff30d88d2dfc0f526372fc33bd (patch)
tree	7a0c9b5d4a57ed734018b447eafdf5f51ab43151 /blog/post/2018-05-18.html
parent	e81928f76ab105c65a0a0997c289f0f521589128 (diff)
download	web-4e1a29cab8d31cff30d88d2dfc0f526372fc33bd.tar.xz