Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Fwd: When was first campaign for computer users' freedom
Richard, it might not come across in the article or other available sources on UCSD Pascal, but I'm convinced from many hours of interviewing Ken Bowles that UCSD Pascal and the efforts in programmed instruction were definitely about freedom, about empowering the end user and the small enterprise. Political? Not so much, if that's your thrust. - Bill On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 4:51 PM, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
In the late 1970s, Ken Bowles and students at UC San Diego produced UCSD Pascal, which was largely an attempt to escape from the strictures of mainframe computing.
It sounds like this was about convenience, not freedom in the political sense of human rights. But I will take a look at the article.
Advances in features (such as drop-down menus) are not the issue here.
Thanks.
-- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call
Empowering people with knowledge or capacities is a fundamentally different idea from campaigning for freedom. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call
In the early 60s, the SHARE orginization, IBM 704,7090, and 7094 scientific users from academia and industry, promoted the distribution of application software and a shared operating system called SOS to its very large community. It published monthly newsletters (real paper) and help large conferences. (I was at a young age SHARE Secretary (newsletter) and a member of its Executive Board. Dave
As I understand it, SHARE was a users' group, and it did not campaign for social change or freedom in the political sense. However, if I'm mistaken, I'd like to see specifics that show it. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call
Perhaps, but perhaps not in the manner you intended to express. "Campaigning for freedom" sounds like a high-level political activity (not criticizing, just categorizing), while "empowering people" sounds like a subversive (in a good way) activity that enables the actualization of freedom, i.e. the end goal of allowing entities to create and control their own destinies, that is, their own software. In other words: if I don't like your UI or your implementation of an algorithm, I'll write my own, because I can. (Consider that I routinely work with machines whose users commonly wrote directly to the hardware.) If They cannot constrain my expression, am I not free? -- Ian On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 11:16 AM, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
Empowering people with knowledge or capacities is a fundamentally different idea from campaigning for freedom.
-- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Ian S. King, MSCS ('06, Washington) Ph.D. Student The Information School University of Washington
Empowering people through education is different from campaigning for freedom because they work against different kinds of problems. One works against a diffuse ignorance, and the other works against a power structure that forcibly holds people down. You can find some similarity between the effects of those two harmful situations, but there are also important differences. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call
participants (4)
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DAVID J. FARBER -
Ian S. King -
Richard Stallman -
William McMillan