Re: A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic, democratic and free system of government and society

[Jean Louis]

* Andrew Yu <libre@andrewyu.org> [2022-01-20 21:00]:
> On 22/01/19 07:26PM, Jean Louis wrote:
> > > Funding has always been an issue with free software.
> > 
> > No, not always, I did not get that as personal impression. In fact my
> > first encounter with free software was that I have paid for it, and
> > continued paying for quite some time. Majority of companies in Germany
> > and generally in European countries marketed GNU/Linux CD/DVD ROMs and
> > later other operating systems. We were paying for books like 100
> > German marks which included GNU/Linux on CD-ROM. Today there are many
> > free software projects which sell their services or otherwise profit
> > from free software as service providers, example is Amazon, Digital
> > Ocean, and plethora of hosting providers. Free software runs Internet,
> > that is fact, and funding comes from its usage and provision, thus
> > direct and indirect sales. Red Hat is still there
> > https://www.redhat.com/en and OpenSUSE https://www.opensuse.org and I
> > can just guess many other companies are still on market making quite a
> > bunch of money, thus getting the funding, and also contributing back
> > to Free Software, such as contributing to kernel and various other
> > programs. 
> 
> True.  But look at what Red Hat, for example, gave us.  Systemd.

OK. But still, Systemd is free software and you need not use it. I use
that on VPS-es and don't use it on personal computers. I cannot say it
works well, it doesn't, it fails to run my daemons with stability, so
I add always some supervision software. But that is not a point. It is
free software and you can change it as you wish.

> I'd argue that systemd isn't evil, but it's damaging the free software
> movement in subtle (and minor) ways, for example, hardcoding Google DNS
> servers into the init system (of course you can change that, but most
> users don't know how, as in the future we don't intend GNU and other
> free systems to be only used by technical people) which imposes slight
> reliance on big companies.  It's also taking over everything in our
> system.  Probably not evil.

You can submit bug reports or use other software. I am using OpenRC,
but I would prefer S6 system.

> Then look at Linux.  A mess of Microsoft, Google, name-your-companies.
> So now?  Digital Restrictions Management in the kernel, fun.

You are free to change it. It is free software. Submit bug reports,
make your own versions of kernel. I am using Linux-libre kernel.

> I agree.  However in a society where money is needed for the most basic
> things to a human's life (food and healthcare), those who devote their
> lives to developing free software and/or activism don't live well.  (I'd
> argue that such a society is unjust.)

There are many people in free software who live well. There are many
people in any kind of business that don't live well. 

Free software is issues without any warranty or suitability for
particular purpose.

What you get is freedom.

Not guarantee for good life.

> Heh!  I've actually looked at asciidoc before, pretty cool.  Looking for
> a functional implementation for it.

There is Org mode export to asciidoc. There are many functional
implementations, a2x and asciidoctor are most notable and work very
well.

-- 
Jean

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