free software resistance

 the cost of computing freedom is eternal vigilance

### retrocomputing *originally posted:* nov 2023 i think retrocomputing can be valuable to education, and also help inspire new ideas. maybe not that long ago, richard stallman made a comment that disparaged retrocomputing, which compared it to free software and implied that retrocomputing was wasteful. i dont agree. and i think im representing his position fairly, though its fine if he simply expressed himself poorly and wishes to clarify. that would be nice actually. the goal of free software is for all software to be free. thats a good goal, but i think the fsf has already sacrificed too much to accomplish it, even watering down what free really means just to be able to say "this is free too." in the past theyve done the opposite, saying things need to be MORE free to stay that way, but the fsf has definitely turned around on this. the truth is that what is enough to make people free today may not be sufficient against tomorrows efforts to subjugate them. the fight must ultimately evolve with the landscape. stallman and the fsf used to do this. but even so, history is a grand tool for education, for putting the present day in context, for learning not only about a bigger picture but also it enables us to compare our situation with the situation of our ancestors; getting rid of the history of computing would not benefit our freedom, it would aid in our ignorance. what i prefer to retrocomputing myself- and i will get back to what i like about it too- is sustainable computing. sustainable computing means that we try to move forward so that our systems can be stable. if you want to run a cutting edge, unstable system that should be your option! that may be valuable research. and beta testers are needed- alpha testers are needed. when industry moves too quickly, users get dragged along on the whims of the powerful. i dont like that. but sometimes things do improve, and i like some of those improvements. if we are really free, we should have the opportunity to use reliable things, as well as try new things to see if theyre better. and we should be more in charge of those decisions than big corporations- of course thats neither how things are today, nor is it something the fsf REALLY gives a shit about. they dont care about this. thats their own damned fault. i dont have a lot of desktops or server hardware. ive owned a server that was more trouble to carry than any of the furniture i owned at the time. this should tell you something about my choices regarding furniture. it was a very heavy server, and i also used it as a stand for my k-cup machine. i liked k-cups, then i moved to tea and only used the machine to spit out pre-measured amounts of water into a cup, then i took to using a small pan on the cooker instead of the k-cup machine. are k-cup machines reasonably sustainable? no. but also that machine didnt have drm, and when the company that made them started putting drm on FOOD i got really eager to throw the thing away. i did try giving it away, to no avail. by the way, i was a happy amazon customer until they started putting drm on BOOKS, which i used to say would be pure evil when it happened, and ive been boycotting amazon ever since they released the kindle. for an e-reader, ive used a smart phone with android (not recommended), a tablet with android (not recommended), a tablet running debian (still not recommended!) and even a lemote netbook running gnewsense. none of these were great- my favourite e-reader experience was connecting the vga output of a desktop to a big television set (crt) that someone was throwing out, and scrolling through the html or plaintext of the book from a web browser using the mouse. the television was farther away than any screen i do most computing on, and it made it so easy to get through a story. i used a huge font, and probably a lower screen resolution. i would love to have a monitor that uses e-ink. yes, i know the limitations of e-ink displays. it would probably be a secondary monitor. but ive moved most of my computing to laptops, despite laptops being lower-power for similar specs. why have i done this? theyre just easier to move around. id much rather move several laptops than several desktops. its often easier to find drivers for older hardware than newer hardware, though very old hardware can also be harder to find support for. i hate when kernels drop support too early. floppy support in the linux kernel should have been moved to a module that was not loaded, or even blacklisted by default. instead, i believe they removed it. but i honestly dont care about the linux kernel. also smaller, newer computers can save power. but! with all of that said, lets talk about retrocomputing. my earliest experiences with computing include single-purpose electronics with built-in games and programs, similar to early arcades but in handheld form. technically, pocket calculators belong to such a category. computers really are calculators that simply have additional functions- every computer instruction is either numeric or an abstraction of something numeric. within a year or so i was using an 8-bit machine with cassette program storage and a thermal printer, and within another year i was using an 8-bit/16-bit hybrid machine running dos 3.3. i fondly remember upgrading to dos 5 and 6. i remember upgrading from windows 3.0 to 3.1, and the latter was a real improvement. i believe it also brought the infamous blue screen, but before that awful thing the computer would just freeze instead. originally, the blue screen (often) gave you an opportunity to save your work or something before restarting the machine, we just hate it because every time you saw it you knew that the computer (or its software) was doing something stupid. dont get me wrong, i dont think this hatred is irrational. the blue screen is a bandage over a terrible design. but before that, it was still worse. i already had newer stuff than most people (at least sometimes) when i would discover older gems, like the c64. the c64 was a beautiful machine in so many ways, im sorry to say ive never owned one- my wife had one once, along with an actual osbourne portable pc, which we never got to work from the time i met her. i have no use for an osbourne really, but it was a treat to see one right there in her home. i could probably make use of a c64 somehow. ive used one before, they are pretty amazing. in recent years ive used an old minicomputer from at&t running system v unix, and i hate at&t but the historical significance of unix is undeniable. ive wired together relays on a minivac, ive used a trs-80, as well as the tandy pocket computer running basic. ive tried dozens of dialects of basic too, including the original basic on a dtss emulator. it is said that history doesnt repeat itself, but it does rhyme. in biology, we learn about "convergent evolution" which causes various organisms to evolve similar features over and over again over millions of years. computing is like this too, it keeps developing the same features over and over and sometimes drags us along needlessly. at worst, retrocomputing provides a valuable lesson here. at best, it preserves and inspires ideas that are somehow applicable to problems we are trying to solve and resolve today, even as we try to make our computing more free. free hardware is also moving forward, and it is exciting to think what sorts of things we might build, that were once accomplished only with software, but which we may be able to build directly into hardware sometimes. lisp machines were a thing. it would be interesting to use a homemade pc that for example, only runs python for its operating system. now, my experience with low-level coding is limited. in basic on a c64, you could just peek and poke values into the memory to make things happen. so dont think i necessarily mean python can just run by itself without some os functions to handle files and that sort of thing. i mean python has libraries, and the libraries interface with the os- i know that. im also confident that someone could produce such a machine, within reasonable proximity to the above description. maybe not exactly like what i just said, but pretty close. but i suppose one thing that people who mostly or only care about software may not get, is that retrocomputing crosses the bridge from software back towards hardware, and back towards fiddling with just circuits and electronics. i was interested in electronics first, before i really got into computers and coding. i am grateful for the latter, since i probably wasnt going to get very far with designing circuits, digital or otherwise. but that old, early love is still there, so i appreciate it when other people have it. and, theres really no need to try to justify retrocomputing to anyone with a proper understanding of the value of history. a blanket statement against retrocomputing, mutually exclusive with free software is an absurdity. at a minimum we should have museums. even if our goal is to make all computing free, pretending the past doesnt exist or refusing to be hands on with computing artifacts is ridiculous. everything we need to do of course, should be possible or made possible with free software. but examining history and putting things in context requires that some people do retrocomputing. it may seem contradictory, but it is certainly in line with a principle that is easily defended. it might not be corrupt or dishonest to say that free software will have achieved its mission when all non-free computing is retrocomputing. the very term implies that its the way we USED TO do computing, versus the way we do computing today. make of that what you will. license: 0-clause bsd ``` # 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 # # Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any # purpose with or without fee is hereby granted. # # THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES # WITH REGARD TO THIS 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IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR # ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES # WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN # ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF # OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. ``` => https://freesoftwareresistance.neocities.org