Thread

1. xlayn · 1789667839 · focus · HN ↗

   Every time "these type of people" are dismissed as lunatics, as extremist and alarmist, time comes back to prove they were right.

   I frankly dismissed the idea of "a group of extremely powerful and rich pedos" under a pizza store... and yes there were none under any pizza store.

   1. zrail · 1789670475 · focus · HN ↗

      From the accounts I've read, RMS is a deeply unpleasant and problematic person.

      Doesn't mean he's wrong.

      1. blagie · 1789671724 · focus · HN ↗

         He's deeply problematic in the same way as someone with autism, Tourette syndrome, echolalia, or OCD are problematic.

         He's not neurotypical.

         Once you deal with it, he stops being problematic.

         And the striking thing is Cassandra syndrome: Virtually everything he has said:

         a) Proves right, decades later

         b) Sounds crazy to most people, at the time

         1. ChickeNES · 1789673120 · focus · HN ↗

            As someone on the spectrum/neurodivergent myself, no, it does not excuse his behavior whatsoever (or the lack of action by MIT).

            Stallman predicting that a technical capability could be abused and then somebody eventually abusing it is not Cassandra syndrome, it's just threat modeling run amuck. It gets old after a while (I should know, I remember classic Slashdot lol). The actual question is whether his proposed cure(s) were worth the cost, and that has very much not been "proven right" (if anything, LLMs/agents are rapidly eroding some of the practical premises his arguments depended on, IMO)

            1. bigfishrunning · 1789675493 · focus · HN ↗

               > if anything, LLMs/agents are rapidly eroding some of the practical premises his arguments depended on, IMO

               As someone who also remembers classic Slashdot, it's staggering how many of the things Stallman was writing about back then came true. Software is centralized and subscription based, and largely not under the consumer's control. I fail to see how LLMs make any of these situations better, care to elaborate?

               1. ChickeNES · 1789677949 · focus · HN ↗

                  > Software is centralized and subscription based, and largely not under the consumer's control.

                  Is it really though? I'll grant that you might have a point with iOS/Android and things like banking apps (no problem with the apps existing, it's when there's no web-based alternative is where the real issue lies). But there's more (F)OSS code out in the wild then there's ever been, more (F)OSS alternatives to most major software, Steam runs on Linux, major companies like Google and Nintendo putting licensing notices where you can read them). Not to mention the rise of open source hardware, the whole makersphere, etc.

                  > I fail to see how LLMs make any of these situations better, care to elaborate?

                  By driving the cost of software to zero. I've had great success over the past year or so constructing a whole range of system software, the original "no driver for this printer" complaint Stallman had would be solved with an evening of Claude/Codex/etc usage now (and to prove my point, we just had someone crank out a Linux GPU driver for M4 Apple Silicon using LLMs)

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