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Ask Slashdot: Is a Return To Idealism Possible In Computing? (slashdot.org) 354

Posted by BeauHD from the computing-gone-mainstream dept.
dryriver writes: Almost everything in computing appears to be tainted by profits-driven decisionmaking today, from the privacy catastrophe of using personal electronic devices to forced SaaS software licensing. If Big Oil or Big Tobacco ran the computing sector, things probably wouldn't be much worse than they are today. So here's the question: Is a return to idealism possible in computing? Can we go back to the days when computing was about smart nerds building cool shit for other nerds? Or is computing so far gone now that things simply cannot get better anymore?
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Ask Slashdot: Is a Return To Idealism Possible In Computing? More

Ask Slashdot: Is a Return To Idealism Possible In Computing?

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  • FOSS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @05:03PM (#59053604)

    Smart nerds build things for other smart nerds, without profit motive, describes the FOSS ecosystem which is broader and healthier than at any time in the past.

    • Re:FOSS (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @05:10PM (#59053656) Journal

      FOSS needs to focus on practical problems instead of just Jupiter Scale or trying to force Lisp or functional programming on everybody. Big/hard/esoteric problems need to be solved, but so does making it easy and practical to track bathroom supplies at Cubicle, Inc. If you want to take on Microsoft, focus on that a bit. Oh, and git off my lawn!

      • Re:FOSS (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @06:02PM (#59054002)

        Tracking bathroom supplies at Cubicle Inc isn't exactly cool shit. Sounds like a good area for some profit-seeking entity to provide some boring software.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          I'm not sure why you want to refrigerate a toilet, but it's a free country and I'm sure you can salvage parts from somewhere.

      • FOSS needs to focus on practical problems instead of just Jupiter Scale or trying to force Lisp or functional programming on everybody. Big/hard/esoteric problems need to be solved, but so does making it easy and practical to track bathroom supplies at Cubicle, Inc. If you want to take on Microsoft, focus on that a bit. Oh, and git off my lawn!

        Why take on Microsoft? The approaching SaaS conversion will complete their mission. And their sycophants will be in here yelling at everyone else about how popular it is.

        People are way too worried about the famous cigarette love/hate fest, that unless you take down Microsoft, you are nothing.

        Meanwhile the faithful can enjoy that cutting edge programming for toilet paper usage.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        FOSS needs to focus on practical problems instead of just Jupiter Scale or trying to force Lisp or functional programming on everybody. Big/hard/esoteric problems need to be solved, but so does making it easy and practical to track bathroom supplies at Cubicle, Inc. If you want to take on Microsoft, focus on that a bit. Oh, and git off my lawn!

        No it doesn't. In fact, the idealism and profit motive aren't mutually exclusive paths for computing. People who want to return to the "idealism" of computing can wri

    • Re: FOSS (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      There's nothing wrong with making a profit unless you're a socialist or a communist. Your fantasy era of no profits tainting computing never existed.

      • Re: FOSS (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Motard ( 1553251 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @05:55PM (#59053966)

        The difference is that we used be excited about what we could make electronics and computers do (for profit or not). There's still a lot of that around - in the maker community for instance.

        But now, since Zuckerberg and his ilk came along, it's about what computers and electronics can make people do.

        And that's where the money is.

        • Re: FOSS (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @06:34PM (#59054182)

          The difference is that we used be excited about what we could make electronics and computers do (for profit or not). There's still a lot of that around - in the maker community for instance.

          But now, since Zuckerberg and his ilk came along, it's about what computers and electronics can make people do.

          And that's where the money is.

          Personal computing has matured. And once a technology has matured, it isn't under control of the people who brought it there.

          And I don't really mind that. I'm still who I always was, an annoying geek who makes stuff. Computing was just a way to do that. As computing becomes rote and boring, I'll abandon it for something else interesting. I'd hate to become one of those angry od guys, pissed off that there is a GUI, or whatever they are mad about. It was a hellava ride though, longer than other fun stuff I've done by a long shot.

    • It also describes a sector of the hacking community who are in it for the lulz.

    • In a nutshell, the problem is that Havoc Pennington and Lennart Poettering are idealists, too.

    • You forgot the part where sleazy entrepreneurs use the tools that the geeks develop in order to earn a lot of money. The geeks remain happy that they built something, remaining completely oblivious to how, once again the jocks and the charismatics have taken advantage of them.

  • Stupid question. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Major_Disorder ( 5019363 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @05:07PM (#59053634)
    It is like they have never heard of Open source, Linux, LibreOffice, and about a million other pieces of software created without a profit motive.

    • Re:Stupid question. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by lgw ( 121541 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @05:20PM (#59053730) Journal

      It is like they have never heard of Open source, Linux, LibreOffice,

      Linux, you mean the product of RedHat, a division of IBM? LibreOffice, forked from that property of Oracle? Everything is so intertwined with big business these days.

      You can still, of course, make your own open source product that no one will use, but just try getting attention to it now, with all the noise from the Fortune500 open source stuff.

      I've been wondering if there's a simple way to create a nerd-only internet. I mean, That Place We Don't Talk About still works, but the spam never stopped, and web sites are a neat idea. What about Gopher? Maybe we could make a nerd internet using RTF documents over Gopher?

      No businesses, no JS or other such nonsense, running on the existing internet, just not HTML or port 80. These days something like Gopher (or, heck, FTP plus some convention) would be so under the radar of ISPs and advertisers and Google, it would return privacy to us nerds.

      • Re:Stupid question. (Score:5, Informative)

        by infolation ( 840436 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @05:36PM (#59053830)

        Linux, you mean the product of RedHat, a division of IBM? LibreOffice, forked from that property of Oracle? Everything is so intertwined with big business these days.

        No. It's GNU/Linux, freed from the encumberance of AT&T patents, which gives computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices, by collaboratively developing and providing software that is based on the following freedom rights: users are free to run the software, share it (copy and distribute), study it, and modify it.

      • Re:Stupid question. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Major_Disorder ( 5019363 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @05:39PM (#59053860)
        Linux is not Redhat.
        Libreoffice forked off from Oracle many years ago, and became immensely better for it.

        • Historical note: The Oracle version was itself a fork of something from Sun.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by lgw ( 121541 )

          Linux is not Redhat.

          No shit. But it got systemd anyway, for better fo for worse, didn't it? The shadow of major corporations is hard to escape.

          Quite essential parts of Linux are no longer "of, by, and for the nerds", but corporate product.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Linux, you mean the product of RedHat, a division of IBM?

        Nice lie FUDmaster. Way to wrap it in the purchase of RedHat by IBM. And now for something completely different, the truth. [phoronix.com]

        LibreOffice, forked from that property of Oracle? Everything is so intertwined with big business these days.

        Are you referring to Open Office, which had an open source license that allowed the fork to occur? Don't forget mySQL forked into MariaDB and Java forked into IcedTea. So what did Oracle really pay 4 billion for? Dead on arrival Solaris? Never ending lawsuits against Google?

        Just because you can name drop companies who contribute to code or purchase each other does not mean that th

      • Re:Stupid question. (Score:4, Informative)

        by caseih ( 160668 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @10:36PM (#59055116)

        LibreOffice, forked from that property of Oracle? Everything is so intertwined with big business these days.

        Um, no it wasn't forked from property of Oracle. The open source code that LibreOffice forked originated when the small German company that made StarOffice open sourced their code. StarOffice was continued as a proprietary product and that is what Oracle bought from Sun who bought it from Star Division. To say that LibreOffice depended in any way on the corporate support of Oracle is false. You could pick many examples of corporate-driven open source projects, but LibreOffice really isn't one of them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        No businesses, no JS or other such nonsense, running on the existing internet, just not HTML or port 80.

        Hyperlinks are actually quite cool and I wouldn't want to do without them.

        But yes, having an actual website instead of a self-assembling mess of JS monstrosities would definitely be a step forward.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by lgw ( 121541 )

          Going from old memory, but doesn't RTF support hyperlinks? I mean, they'd need to be gopher:// but that's fine.

          In any case, extending an open source RTF client to be a Gopher browser seems fairly simple.

    • Most people haven't, and of those who have, most can't change even if they wanted to. It's what's used at work, so they also use it at home. Or if you're looking for a job - knowing LibreOffice won't get it for you.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by I75BJC ( 4590021 )
        I always used different Operating System, software and hardware from $WORK.

        Admittedly, theft/misappropriation was rampant at my $WORK so I may have overdone it.
        Regardless, using Apple products was an easy way to solve this issue in my case. With the added plus of MSOffice if I really needed it (never did). The Mac ecosystem is quite robust.

    • It's not a stupid question. Idealism has largely left the Slashdot comment section. Sites like HN are populated almost entirely by script kiddies who work for privacy-destroying adware behemoths.

      The only wrong part is to think that this is somehow new. We've been asking this question since Bill Gates first sold Microsoft Basic. But the critical mass seems to be gone.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Didn't the statistics show the vast majority of Linux code was now written by professionals hired by for-profit companies? I feel like there's been a development where companies are more willing to give away code, like look at Android, Swift, .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, Visual Studio Code but the flip side is they want to sell you services instead like Azure, AWS, GMS, iCloud etc. which heavily compete with the idealistic, community oriented projects.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        All the low hanging fruit has been picked. What's left tends to be a huge investment of time and energy that needs people working on it full time.

        Take development. GCC is great but support for some architectures like ARM is falling behind Clang/LLVM, because ARM (the company) is pouring its resources into the latter and promoting it as the official ARM compiler now.

        How about IDEs? Considering developers use them all the time, you might think that the open source ones would be top notch... But they are just

    • Even stupid questions have answers.

    • As the question was posted here, I think it was actually an interesting one, though you never can tell after the editors have worked it over. (Not complaining. They improve mine as often as they mangle.)

      In the posted form, I think the "insightful" answers should have considered the black-box problem. In other words, these years most software and hardware has grown to be so large and complex that almost no one can see inside the black box. This means that "idealism" as a motivation tends to get crushed under

    • It is like they have never heard of Open source, Linux, LibreOffice, and about a million other pieces of software created without a profit motive.

      No... that's the real, frustrating, obnoxious crap we ended up with. We use it, while praying for something better to be invented, but knowing it is unlikely.

      Imagine all you had was a basic interpreter and a dream. That was some idealism.

    • It is like they have never heard of Open source, Linux, LibreOffice, and about a million other pieces of software created without a profit motive.

      Linux is hardly without a profit motive.

      And yeah, you're right. Most people have never heard of this software. Marketing matters. Even when you're selling bullshit. Just ask PT Barnum.

  • Never went away (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @05:10PM (#59053652)

    Nerds building cool stuff for other nerds never went away. You just have to choose to use those tools, and accept that they will not be as polished as the commercial products that are easily available.

    • Get yourself an Arduino and Raspberry Pi, join the community and you're good.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      And that is just it: If you go commercial, you pay with money and enduring the limits that impose themselves when somebody wants to make money. If you go FOSS, you pay with a steeper learning curve, but get vastly more power to do things. Complaining about that, as so many people like to do, does not fix anything. These are the options. Select one and live with the consequences.

  • Answer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Falos ( 2905315 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @05:12PM (#59053680)

    Or is computing so far gone now that things simply cannot get better anymore

    At scale, yes. The "opportune" nature of everything has been found and "optimized", everything big-scale is staked ground. You need an exosuit to safely load any Big Deal website onto your browser now and that simply won't get better anymore.

    Nerd shit still happening on smaller levels. Consider github. Unfortunately, anything that swells into "exploitable" radar ranges will be "leveraged" to the maximum extent permitted by law.

    That last bit isn't hyperbole, that's often the specific parameter. Consider an auto-towing yard.

    • Just noting that I think you're on the right track though I hope I worded the "insight" more clearly in my reply earlier in the discussion. Short form is I think we agree that the black boxes are so complex they squash idealism most of the time.

  • Things were better (Score:3)

    by martinX ( 672498 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @05:16PM (#59053704)

    Things were better in the seventies, man.

  • RMS, is that you? [i.redd.it]
  • I think there's a lot of idealism in the blockchain and decentralization space. Censorship resistance and currency unmoored from government and the whims of politicians has a lot of people working hard problems to solve those goals.

  • Developers got bills to pay (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bettodavis ( 1782302 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @05:30PM (#59053792)
    So they need paying jobs.

    Those who don't are usually people still living with their parents (so basically mum and dad provide), or people who earn a living from evangelizing others about giving their code away for free.

    Open source development works as a career today precisely because companies have become interested in it, seeing the 'free software' as a product's gravy and part of a sales pitch, sometimes even as a requirement for selling their products.

    So, instead of seeing it as shameful and 'selling out', we should be thankful we can enjoy developing or using open source software, while its developers get paid.

  • i think in the general commercial tide — there will be gardens of like-minded geeks who gravitate through similar interests, as they do in open source projects, and in forums like :make and /slashdot. the number of geeks with demographic bonds of the future will still outnumber the 'purer' days when geek knowledge was shared by default amongst many fewer geeks.

    when we had BBS's, there were like 20 people, and they also had to be geeks and set their modem to 2400 baud 8-N-1, and now i can email my moth

  • I think the sense of malaise the original post describes is just part of a natural cycle that unfortunately impacts most things in human affairs, be they progressive movements, technological revolutions, or frontiers. Visionaries and brave spirits discovery and colonize new terrain, escaping some old status quo or incumbencies. It is exciting, it is *their* world, free of the troubles and imperfections they built it to escape. Inevitably, as time goes on, it becomes accepted, mainsteam, monitized according

  • Agreed, the Good Old Days (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Brett Buck ( 811747 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @05:38PM (#59053844)

    The idealistic days of computing artillery trajectories, evaluating nuclear implosion geometry, creating ICBM guidance systems, and the ever-whimsical days of the IBM360 and COBOL.

          Agreed, those were great days, before the computing world was taken over by dabblers and zealots.

            I also assume you mean "smart nerds building cool shit for other nerds" for money? Because, presumably, you still can do that, just that no one is willing to pay you for indulging yourself. That was only possible for about 3-4 years about 25 years ago. The preceding 40 years and the ensuing 20, not so much.

  • Uh. (Score:2)

    by PCM2 ( 4486 )

    So this is what /. has come to? One paragraph saying, basically, "Mommy, why does everything suck?"

    I'd argue that no, things cannot get better as long as the brains of "smart nerds" are incapable of forming even a valid opinion.

    • ... incapable of forming even a valid opinion.

      Physician ...

  • yes. (Score:2)

    by lkcl ( 517947 )

    yes - it just takes determination and commitment to do something right, no matter what the personal consequences, such as this: https://groups.google.com/a/gr... [google.com]

    (previous efforts include this, back in 2012 https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org] and, interestingly, as far back as 1998, the f-cpu: https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org] )

    sticking to principles to do the right thing can result in a complete shit-storm: https://groups.google.com/a/gr... [google.com]

    the back-lash against "inexplicable, conspiracy-driven efforts that be

  • Consider the number of workers donating their time to Linux and open-source software including BSD. The geek community may have more idealism than anyone I can think of.
  • In order of easy to hard:

    The desktop is easy, install Mint or a similar Linux distro. It is usually easy and painless and appears to be free of commercial influence or interference so far.

    For servers use CentOS. So far it also appears to be free of commercial influence or interference. Unfortunately anything more than a basic install is going to take a significant investment in effort to learn and set up. Also if you want security and stability without commercial compromise there will be more effo
  • No, I don't think it's possible to go back. Today, everybody (geeks included) are just resting on the data mining tools made by giant corporations. Whether it's GMail or Amazon or a Facebook property, or a "smart" phone, I don't know of anybody (other than myself) who gives a shit about privacy or supporting a non-giant corporation. Slashdot as a representative microcosm is a great example. The population here, by and large, doesn't care about privacy or ownership of personal data any more. It's a very

  • The moment you use the word "tainted" in reference to profit, you reveal that you're just another ideologue.

    I'm pretty sure you need money to live. That comes from somewhere. By referring to profit as "taint" you're suggesting that you know what's the "right" amount of money other people are allowed to have.

  • Big Tech is the epitome of 'Murican idealism; Get rich quick by any means necessary & f*^k everyone else.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Simply put I.T Professionals have never utilized their democratic rights to assemble to protect their rights. Consequently these rights have been whittled away over the years. No-one represents us at the highest echelons of government to stop employers putting ever more draconian conditions on our employment and rights.

    To every special snowflake that thought they were so good that they were somehow outside of this paradigm, you were wrong all along, you'll never be "The Man". They can't negotiate, the

  • Instead of restoring your ideal for one industry, head for an entire economy untainted by the profit motive: Cuba. They’ll be glad to put another doughy nerd to work in the cane fields.

  • Look who runs the companies that exhibit the most egregrious evil and / or greedy behavior. Look at the last names of the CEOs and what group they belong to.

    Hint: it is the same as the most greedy and egregious Hollywood CEOs and the owners of the top banks.

    Disclaimer: Not all of that group are evil and greedy, not by far, but many people who are greedy and evil belong to that group.

  • have you been sleeping?

    We're FOSS. We rule. Shenzen is hardware FOSS with the brakes removed. They're kicking Silicon Valleys ass, big time, as we speak. The upside of digital goods and increasingly hardware with a marginal cost approaching zero is that these are spaces in which marxism actually works. No need for idealsm to return. It's here more than ever and with it the age of cyberpunk. Big time. Enjoy.

    Glad I could help.

    My 2 eurocents.

  • as others have said, if you want current tech, there is still a lot to be found in the OSS projects of today, both soft & hardware.

    but if you really long for those golden olden days of computing, then just do that.
    have you checked out the retro computing scene these days?
    it's almost more vibrant then it ever was in the 80/90's, because we have the internet now all those retro projects are easily shared.
    there is almost no 8 or 16 bit platform that doesn't have very active projects going on.

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