[PLUG] a RANT, was Re: Ubuntu Long Term Support?

[Keith Lofstrom]

On Tue, Aug 05, 2014 at 08:31:57AM -0700, Dick Steffens wrote:
> It's not just the Ubuntu folks, though. The version of Libre Office that 
> comes with 14 changes some things that my fingers learned how to do. 
...
> There were other little annoyances I've now forgotten, but it was enough 
> to make me very happy when I went back to 12.
...
> ... And since Ubuntu wants the world to go to Unity,
> I'm looking at alternatives that understand 
> the value of not fixing things that aren't broke.

<RANT>

F/OSS software won't be truly "libre" until we wrest control of
part of the development space away from the self-indulgent, change-
hypnotized, aspergers-crippled, new-hardware junkies who dominate
most of the common distros.  What they create for our community is
important, but it is by no means the only creativity, and is
sometimes much more destructive than productive for the larger
community.  We should seize the freedom to remix, rewrite, and quite
often reject their sometimes brilliant and sometimes incredibly
stupid code, and create our own distros and distro-creation systems,
adapted for the vast majority of people  who have more important 
tasks to do with their precious time and unique skills, instead of
updating and too-often regressing computers.

I once got into a shouting match with Richard Stallman (but then,
who hasn't?) about the incompleteness of his "four freedoms" in
the real world.  What is the F/OSS community doing to protect
other people's personal investment in hardware, skills, ad-hoc
self-created software, and legacy data?  Why should the general
public protect a few software creator's freedoms when they show
such cavalier disregard for ours? 

Some of us came to Linux specifically to escape the consumerist
treadmill that underlies proprietary software and hardware, the
creation of new security holes associated with rapidly-expanding
bloatware, the conformity imposed by dependence on the walled
gardens created by avaricious style-junkies.

Out here in the real world, people actually do stuff with computers,
like feed, house, clothe, educate, transport, and protect people
like Stallman, even providing him with crap like the HFCS-laden
Coca-Cola that he drinks while he natters on about ideological
purity.  If he honestly extended his alleged principles to the
inputs to his own life, including the closed-design hardware that
runs his GNOO-LEENOOKS software, he would be running GNOO-LEENOOKS
on piles of sticks, shivering in the winter cold, and losing weight
fast.  Myself, I will not reject the chisel I use to break the
walls of our common prison, even if it was created by slave labor.

Ubuntu has lost its way, though it has become the springboard for
many other derivative distros (just as Ubuntu is a derivative of
Debian).  Everyday users won't have true software freedom until they
can express their needs and desires in everyday, sloppy, inprecise
human language, and have those desires translate automatically into
an updated, secure, bug-resistant stack of software and hardware
that is open and maintainable all the way down to the transistors on
the silicon.  Until then, we compromise, and devote way too much
effort doing stuff that ought to be automated, and cleaning up after
the childish clowns who we allow to screw up way too much of the
software we use.

One of the many reasons I respect Linus Torvalds is that he will 
tell code developers, bluntly and sarcastically, when they screw
up, when their lazy, thoughtless code-typing risks the commons we
all depend on.  I fear that we depend too much on him, and don't
add our own efforts and scrutiny to the creative process, 
shouldering some of the burden so that he isn't broken by it,
and preparing for that sad day when time or accident takes his
contributions from us. 

Even Stallman has something to add here, perhaps more than his lazy
habits and blind arrogance subtract, and we should also encourage
new "bad cops" to attack the most egregious transgressions
against our freedoms (hundreds of them, not just four).

I feel your pain, Brother Steffens.  While the open technology
projects I work on will not directly address most of your problems,
I hope they help a little with some of them, and help a little with
the problems of billions of other people.  Among whom are thousands
who will directly address your problems, and mine, when we help 
them liberate themselves.

</RANT>

Keith
   
-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com