[Raion]

Hi Raion & Co,

simple fact:

- Richard Stallman, through GNU, has done more for the software development community than probably any other single person.
- Others is this area are Linus Torvalds with Linux and git and followed by the BSD initiative (and its settlement with AT&T) and Tim Berners-Lee.

These have completely transformed the IT (software) landscape.

It depends on your perspective. GNU's tools are not great, but not terrible either. GCC is competent on x86, ARM etc. But it gets far more broken the more you go off the beaten path, i.e. PA-RISC, and for years, SGI-MIPS (Only C++ and C frontends work, no fortran, no gnat/ada, no ObjC, no Go etc.)

It's my opinion, for instance, that NetBSD's portability factors, and OpenBSD's contributory projects like OpenSSH, have done a lot to actually bring the *NIX space up to parity with the likes of IBM i, VMS, etc (These have been replaced by /mostly/ Linux and some commercial UNIX in the low ends of their markets, with many still remaining on the mid/higher end). GNU wouldn't have the manpower to build a competent SSH properly, look at the trash heap joke that is lsh (Does anyone even use that???). There's no GPL licensed SSH package that is halfway decent that has any market projection. I only know of WolfSSH, and lsh. WolfSSH has a terrifying build system and is bare on features. Dropbear is better.

In all cases they did this by making what they created available to all and sundry.

My argument is that GNU was not done in a good faith way to do anything other than spite proprietary software. Unlike some people here, I do not see a problem with proprietary software (IRIX, after all, is proprietary) and I do not desire to erase it, but to complement, work with it, and offer alternatives when there's a competent need (such as we see with SSH)

Let's not get too carried away with blind ideology (do people really believe that GNU is some sort of sinister communist plot ??!!!) and think about the basic and practical benefits this has been to so many people around the world.

I believe that GNU no longer is beneficial as long as it holds a monoculture, either directly via its umbrella projects, or through indirect forces via the GPL.

We do not need "strong leaders" (ie political leaders in each of recent USA, China, Russian, Middle East and others), we need people to have freedom of choice and self determination (without need to take up arms and sacrifice their lives !!).

No politics, please Little that I said here is meant in a political manner. When I mention Caesar or other historical figures, it's out of admiration for their accomplishments, not attempts to inject their philosophies, or lackthereof, into a discussion.

Everyone has an opinion on politics, just like a butthole. So unless we want to start spreading our buttholes at each other... let's not?

SGI had a chance to make IRIX code available many years ago and they choose not to (please don't talk about AT&T burden, as the original UNIX source code was made available when it was purchased by Caldera) and in fact "shredded" lots of accumulated knowledge and engineering assets, out of commercial self interest. This could never happen if the material had been made available for open contribution.

I'm the one who found out the latter when I contacted Rackable years later. Nobody apparently did, but the guy who I spoke to there told me about it.

The IRIX code not being released, from what I know of it, and those who've laid eyes on the source (i.e. not me) stated there's a lot of issues, similar to those that Sun had to overcome with OpenSolaris, before it could ever get a release. In his words:

"IRIX has mostly SGI code in the kernel. But the graphics drivers contain code that is not original to SGI, some of it belonging to Intel (especially firmware and microcode) and some belonging to ATi (now AMD). The userland is more of a patchwork, with bits and pieces from BSD, GNU, Microsoft Xenix, IBM, and Sun. The Sun code and BSD is all released now, but the Xenix, IBM code? Good luck. Also, some code from Cray, which is now its own thing."

At the time he wrote me, Cray was still not part of HPE.

As the only one actually seeming to fuck with the base of IRIX in 15+ years, the neweoe, IRIX Community Edition etc. minimizes GPL. We include Nedit, for historical reasons, but it's unlikely our code will ever require GCC to build, and other than say, libfam or other code that's already out there under the GPL, there's not much of a chance I'm gonna let IRIX CE get encumbered. I'd rather write it myself, even.

As for their decision to do everything they did, while I see it as a shame, it's against my moral principles to say, if I had the power, go back and force them to reverse course. SGI is not mine, IRIX is not mine. I have morals, and those include property rights. It was their choice, and now we have to live with those consequences.

But on the same note as consequences, I do not approve of or respect RMS for his actions. His actions ring as very much collectivist to my ears, and as I'm not a collectivist, I cannot say I agree. I am forced, whether I like it or not, to live with his actions as a member of the open source community.

I should also note, under no pretenses do I think the term "Free software" is a good one. Unless it's free as in beer, personally I have no interest in using it anymore, because the GPL, and RMS's, definition of freedom is essentially a form of collectivism.

[jwhat]

Hi Raion,

I should also note, under no pretenses do I think the term "Free software" is a good one. Unless it's free as in beer, personally I have no interest in using it anymore, because the GPL, and RMS's, definition of freedom is essentially a form of collectivism.

you are running a platform ("Irix Network"), the value of which is proportional to the collective contributions of people who contribute.
It is this community minded "collectivism" that make Irix Network a useful resource and Nekochan before it.

You seem to fail to recognise the "spirit" that has been behind GNU and much of the most valuable Open Source software.

Also contribution in no way stops or diminishes people's ability to create priority enclaves. The problem is that many "business" who purchase enterprise software are now very vary of potential "lock in". This is a common thread when businesses request response to RFPs for software. The purchaser is typically happy to pay for the proprietroy packaging but likes the idea that there is a way out should things not go as per plan (ie license / support fee escalation).

Anyhow no more soap boxing on this from me now.... back to having fun with my old SGI toasters ;-)

Cheers from Oz,


jwhat/John.

[Raion]

Collectivism is not what you claim it is. Collectivism is the practice of giving a group or monolith more priority than the individuals that make it up. I believe IRIXNet stands for the individual -- I am very light on disciplinary action here generally, only really warning/banning when people are truly bad actors or acting in an anti-community manner (e.g. for the purposes of sowing hatred or harassment, and lacking any constructive attributes for their actions)

IRIXNet is at its core the result of the hard work of individuals. A majority of the Wiki content was created by yours truly, the forum's design and the main site's theme is very much my own design and reused for other sites I own. Booterizer, the work of UNXMAAL. Dual MIPS III/IV packages? Dexter1. Etc. There's millions of examples I can give. But I've formed a belief that rather than barking orders at others, I now just get my hands dirty and only offer guidance when it's solicited.

My belief is that GNU itself has no actual benefits to the community, and the GPL and GNU have been toxic more than advancing. Historically, yes GCC is incredibly important, but that's in absence of any real alternatives. You had LCC, but that is bound by a noncommercial license, otherwise you had proprietary compilers, many of which are 100% better than GCC in almost all respects. The real winners are OpenSSH, OpenSSL, ncurses (which was developed by an outside team that later transferred it to GNU project), Xfree86/Xorg, etc.

[jwhat]

Hi Raion,

I think there is confusion on "intent" vs "means" here:

"collectivism - the practice or principle of giving a group priority over each individual in it"

In fact I think that the way you are running Irix Network actually falls in line with this model and the "means" you use to achieve it is the right one ie voluntary contribution and mostly self regulation.

The alternate model is "tyranny", "dictatorship" or "authoritarian", which this community would not accept (unless you paid them ;-) ).

So thanks very much for providing a platform that allows voluntary (dare I say democratic ;-) ) collectivism to reign .

Cheers from the partially democratic country of Australia,

jwhat/John.

[jenna64bit]

Personally, I disagree with your opinion on GPL, but I can recognize it as valid. Myself, I like the LGPL more. That said, there's plenty of BSD licensed software out there so you're not alone in that opinion at all. Tangentially, I'm excited to see what neweoe brings, long overdue as even Nekoware didn't really go there.

[lunatic]

No politics, please Little that I said here is meant in a political manner. When I mention Caesar or other historical figures, it's out of admiration for their accomplishments, not attempts to inject their philosophies, or lackthereof, into a discussion.

Everyone has an opinion on politics, just like a butthole. So unless we want to start spreading our buttholes at each other... let's not?

I always got the impression that you are very much interested and engaged in politics. You also often take more of an American approach to free speech, that is, free speech might rather be restricted whenever someone doesn't salute Old Glory. Sure, we like you the way you are, but you can't deny you're a person of strong opinions... Maybe you just need another Sub-forum for political discussions with extra rules. That would even be innovative. I mean, American society is seriously divided, yet people still have to live with each other. When you have just two political options, you just cannot pretend that the other side doesn't exist, so you might just as well talk it out in a certain place and then learn to be friendly again in the rest of your daily life.

In any way, for a bit of historical context, I think this discussion reminds me of discussions back in the comp.sys.sgi newsgroups. Back then people tried to convince each other that GNU/Linux is the worst thing ever. Even back then it was a lost cause. I certainly think that this mentality hurt SGI as a company, because they had to fight their most committed customers when the got the Altix, Prism, and Windows/Linux based PCs out on the market. It just wasn't possible for SGI to say: "look, HP is doing it, IBM is doing it. We are also doing it and you still get a fancy looking box".

[Raion]

Personally, I disagree with your opinion on GPL, but I can recognize it as valid. Myself, I like the LGPL more. That said, there's plenty of BSD licensed software out there so you're not alone in that opinion at all. Tangentially, I'm excited to see what neweoe brings, long overdue as even Nekoware didn't really go there.

I never expect everyone to agree with me. If someone can respect the basis from which I come and not attack it repeatedly, then we're already leaps and bounds ahead of ourselves. I recognize, and I think I've said this, that not every GPL/Linux/GNU advocate is a radical. I have friends in the Gentoo and Void communities especially.

The LGPL is actually, IMHO, a reasonable license, and I also use the released CPAL, which is an MPL plus some of the AGPL provisions -- operate it over a network? Gotta provide your changes! If the GPL and primary derivatives added more linking exceptions and an IP expiration date to the code if it goes abandoned, maybe I'd be a bit more inclined to be supportive; though that's exactly what RMS doesn't want to do. 

I actually have been working, for the last few days in between IRIXCE and /other/ work, on some little original tools. Hint: The fact IRIX's original tools rarely ever provide a human-readable option to get proper byte numbers, is a crying shame.

I always got the impression that you are very much interested and engaged in politics. You also often take more of an American approach to free speech, that is, free speech might rather be restricted whenever someone doesn't salute Old Glory. Sure, we like you the way you are, but you can't deny you're a person of strong opinions... Maybe you just need another Sub-forum for political discussions with extra rules. That would even be innovative. I mean, American society is seriously divided, yet people still have to live with each other. When you have just two political options, you just cannot pretend that the other side doesn't exist, so you might just as well talk it out in a certain place and then learn to be friendly again in the rest of your daily life.

I'm actually quite honestly, burned out on and over politics itself. Historical discussions are cool, but I'm tired of trying to argue with boneheads who will uphold ideologies that directly killed millions or even billions as a result of incompetence or intention. When you argue and debate with someone who holds an unreasonable position, and will sit there and be an apologist for the exact things you oppose, it's hard to be civil. So no, a political discussion gets a thumbs down from me. IRIXNet doesn't operate as a dictatorship, contrary to some people. I have four other staff that any major changes go through, and at least three others don't want politics here. Frankly, I agree with them.

I'll take the actual bits you talked about above (namely the idea that I'm a typical American politics guy) to PM though, because we're capable of having civil discussions of course!

In any way, for a bit of historical context, I think this discussion reminds me of discussions back in the comp.sys.sgi newsgroups. Back then people tried to convince each other that GNU/Linux is the worst thing ever. Even back then it was a lost cause. I certainly think that this mentality hurt SGI as a company, because they had to fight their most committed customers when the got the Altix, Prism, and Windows/Linux based PCs out on the market. It just wasn't possible for SGI to say: "look, HP is doing it, IBM is doing it. We are also doing it and you still get a fancy looking box".

I don't really intend to convince people of GNU/Linux being terrible, no. I just want to critique the licensing choices used by GNU/RMS/the FSF, and the parts of the open source community under their boot and using their license which I see as unfair. I even use it, after all, for KVM because frankly BHYVE is ass, Xen on the BSDs is gross, and illumos KVM is behind. I do cringe every time I have to get behind the actual hypervisor, so many things are mildly vexing. I also worked as an RHEL 6/7 support rep for a web company from 2/2017-9/2019, and before that, RHEL5/6 from 7/2013 - 3/2014 so I had to tolerate RHEL and its eccentricities at a day job. While I tolerated it, it certainly irked me enough to make me only use BSD and illumos at home when possible, I have exactly 2 GNU/Linux boxes: an Ubuntu 18.04 hypervisor, and a VyOS-based router (my JunOS-based router is too loud for my roommates sensitive hearing I guess???)

[weblacky]

No politics, please Little that I said here is meant in a political manner. When I mention Caesar or other historical figures, it's out of admiration for their accomplishments, not attempts to inject their philosophies, or lackthereof, into a discussion.

Everyone has an opinion on politics, just like a butthole. So unless we want to start spreading our buttholes at each other... let's not?

I always got the impression that you are very much interested and engaged in politics. You also often take more of an American approach to free speech, that is, free speech might rather be restricted whenever someone doesn't salute Old Glory. Sure, we like you the way you are, but you can't deny you're a person of strong opinions... Maybe you just need another Sub-forum for political discussions with extra rules. That would even be innovative. I mean, American society is seriously divided, yet people still have to live with each other. When you have just two political options, you just cannot pretend that the other side doesn't exist, so you might just as well talk it out in a certain place and then learn to be friendly again in the rest of your daily life.

In any way, for a bit of historical context, I think this discussion reminds me of discussions back in the comp.sys.sgi newsgroups. Back then people tried to convince each other that GNU/Linux is the worst thing ever. Even back then it was a lost cause. I certainly think that this mentality hurt SGI as a company, because they had to fight their most committed customers when the got the Altix, Prism, and Windows/Linux based PCs out on the market. It just wasn't possible for SGI to say: "look, HP is doing it, IBM is doing it. We are also doing it and you still get a fancy looking box".

Without turning this into a political thread I’ll say this: Tolerance.

The USA was about tolerance of other’s differences when those differences didn’t impede on another’s freedoms and rights.  The US has always had a population of many opinions but we were supposed to find a way to be civil towards our fellow countrymen via the command of tolerance.  Perhaps your neighbors didn’t approve that you didn’t go to the same church or they don’t think your as good as them, but publicly they a least treat you with fair indifference and polite acknowledgment.  That’s what you could expect in the America of old, you’re entitled to your opinions and but keep them to yourself in public. Act normal. Communities normally enforced this to preserve the peace.  

It’s only been in the last few decades that tolerance and acceptance have been forcibly swapped in people’s mind and now you either accept and embrace or you get hurt. 

I was raised to be tolerant (and publicly silent) of others as long as they weren’t hurting anything. 

So discourse is fine by me, but I’m old school (and now getting older). I understand the difference between tolerance and acceptance but there are enough in the general population that do not, and that forceful thinking (accept or be hurt) has been allowed to exist in the USA publicly for too long.  It’s now infected legislation and even judicial branches. 

So now people don’t talk about what’s on their minds outside like company, for fear of public harassment or harm.

That’s not the America I knew but it’s the America I got. But it’s not like technical topics turn political very often so it’s not a huge impact on my life.