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400 points ingve | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.207s | source
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userbinator ◴[] No.45035952[source]
This shouldn't just be "questions"; this should be a full-on opposition. Do not give them even an inch, or they'll take a mile.

"debugger vendors in 2047 distributed numbered copies only, and only to officially licensed and bonded programmers." - Richard Stallman, The Right to Read, 1997

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raverbashing ◴[] No.45035983[source]
Stallman's fallacy is thinking every system is perfect and unbreakable and that people have a perfect understanding of software and systems (for better or for worse)

People will be running pirated debugger copies if that comes to shove

99.9% of people DNGAF about OSS. They do care about doing what they need on their phone without malware/bloatware/nagware

Also publishing and development are separate activities

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kazinator ◴[] No.45036011[source]
I doubt that Stallman, of all people, thinks literally that. But systems which are breakable have ways of improving themselves, closing off the exploitable holes. So it makes sense to regard systems as being eventually unbreakable. Or at least having an unacceptably long "mean time between cracks". The game plan cannot simply be "oppressive software and hardware systems will always have imperfections so the good people will cheerfully get around them", even if is is de facto that way at some point in time w.r.t. certain systems. That's actually a kind of defeatist attitude disguised as optimism; passively accepting crap based on the faith that you will scrape through somehow.
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1. raverbashing ◴[] No.45036285[source]
> I doubt that Stallman, of all people, thinks literally that

Yeah I agree his opinion is probably more balanced, however Right to read is a short story displaying characters with too much learned helplessness and too little agency so I'm just going based on what he literally put to paper