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

[Andrew Yu via libreplanet-discuss <libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org>]

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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.

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.

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

> > If people can get it for gratis, non only the people who can't
> > afford paying (which includes a student like me, sadly) won't pay,
> > the others who can afford it are just too lazy to donate.  
> 
> People like you and many others undergo various changes in their
> life. While I did pay first time for free software, and kept paying
> for it, that was because I was in the same time awarded with quality
> printed manuals, real books, and the whole package looked magically
> good. And in reality it was better than good as compared to how much
> money and time and effort I have wasted on broken Windoze. But then
> later I have not paid anything apart Internet for long time, I have
> been downloading it and updating through Internet. Then again I came
> to stage where I could donate to free software projects, and so I did.
> 
> Yes, sometimes you will not be able to pay. But sometimes you will pay
> either in the form of money, or in the form of your own free software
> projects. Payment is not only money. Contributions, bugs, discussions,
> initiatives, speeches, there are many forms of "payments".

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.)

> > It's probably worse in China: donations aren't in the culture.
> 
> Sales are in the culture in China, so just sell free software.

Good idea.

> > I can't say much about office suites because I don't use them, not
> > even the free ones because I use Groff and TeX.
> 
> Recently for many documents I am using Asciidoctor and Asciidoctor
> PDF:
> 
> Asciidoctor | A fast, open source text processor and publishing toolchain for converting AsciiDoc content to HTML5, DocBook, PDF, and other formats.
> https://asciidoctor.org/
> 
> asciidoctor/asciidoctor-pdf: Asciidoctor PDF: A native PDF converter for AsciiDoc based on Asciidoctor and Prawn, written entirely in Ruby:
> https://github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor-pdf/#themes
> 
> Asciidoctor Example
> https://jianmin.dev/asciidoctor-example/
> 
> Using AsciiDoc and Asciidoctor to write documentation - Tutorial
> https://www.vogella.com/tutorials/AsciiDoc/article.html

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

Andrew
:)

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