Richard Stallman: Unjust computing clamps down

Honorary Doctor Richard Stallman elaborated on the growing injustices in computing in a 46 minutes long talk titled Unjust computing clamps down at LibrePlanet 2021 on March 21st, 2021. He also briefly mentioned that he is once again a Free Software Foundation director, and that he won't be stepping down again.

Original story by LibrePlanet 2021 and the Free Software Foundation. Published 2021-03-21, Originally published 2021-03-21.
This work is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

Video Copyright LibrePlanet 2021 / Free Software Foundation. License: Creative Commons Noderivatives License

Richard Stallman elaborates on growing injustices in computing. They are:

Locked-down operating systems
User-resticting app stores
Requiring nonfree client software, including Javascript (Javascript turns the web into something like an app store, but worse)
Online dis-services
Nvidia's Lubyanka: prisoners of the GPU
Proprietary non-interoperable tools as de-facto standards
The Internet of Malthings which will only talk with a mobile phone via an online dis-service
VR with nonfree platforms to run only nonfree applications
Vaccination "passports" could track people in daily life throuh restaurants, theaters, gyms, buses...

Together they reduce your computer to a platform for nonfree malware that will do you a disservice.

"Dr. Richard Stallman launched the free software movement in 1983 and started the development of the GNU operating system (see www.gnu.org) in 1984. GNU is free software: everyone has the freedom to copy it and redistribute it, with or without changes. The GNU/Linux system, basically the GNU operating system with Linux added, is used on tens of millions of computers today. Stallman has received the ACM Grace Hopper Award and the ACM Software and Systems Award, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award, and the the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, as well as several doctorates honoris causa, and has been inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame."

The Russians, the Japanese and the Chinese are all aware that Richard Stallman is back in play.

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Gigith

10 months ago

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Return of the king.

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JorgePeixoto

10 months ago

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Hi. I am new here. I welcome rms back! It is my opinion that, while we made important progress (although definitely not enough) in raising awareness about misogyny, systemic racism and certain other great evils, there have been a few injustices in between. As in many other situations, the answer is in neither pole---we must listen to everyone and make a synthesis. In that spirit, I welcome many of the ethical advances of the last decades, I oppose unenlightened people such as Trump and Bolsonaro and I generally resent those who take pride in being "politically incorrect" (which often means "ignorant bigot"). Yet at the same time, I believe there have been relevant mistakes in this struggle, and Richard Stallman was caught in a "perfect storm" (sorry for the cliché) that caused his flaws to be judged far too harshly as well as being condemned by imaginary flaws. Please see the text I carefully wrote on the subject, based on the ideas of the great Nadine Strossen---the prominent feminist and civil rights activist who was the first female President of the ACLU---and Suzanne Nossel---CEO of PEN America and former executive director of Amnesty International USA---among others: https://gitl...tice-for-rms

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Richard Stallman: Unjust computing clamps down

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