From his website stallman.org:

Richard Stallman has cancer. Fortunately it is slow-growing and manageable follicular lymphona, so he will probably live many more years nonetheless. But he now has to be even more careful not to catch Covid-19.

Recent video of him speaking at GNU 40 Hacker Meeting. Screenshots of video stream.

  • makeasnek@lemmy.ml
    207·
    1 year ago

    Sad news about a pioneer of internet freedom. He has earned his fair share of criticism and detractors, but he has also given a lot to the Linux and free software ecosystem. I personally run [email protected] on all my rigs to support open-source cancer research, I hope one day we can finally cross cancer off the list of humankind’s foes.

    • MaxHardwood@lemmy.caEnglish
      790·
      1 year ago

      I don’t think we’re too far away from AI’s that can refactor compiled code into any language of your choice; then all software will be open source.

      Edit: lul; at least 50 people are butt hurt over the idea that an AI can decipher assembler in 5-10 years

        • lemmesay@discuss.tchncs.de
          8·
          1 year ago

          GPT, for example, fails in calculation with problems like knapsack, adjacency matrix, Huffman tree, etc.

          it starts giving garbled output.

            • lloram239@feddit.de
              3·
              1 year ago

              The current LLMs can’t loop and can’t see individual digits, so their failure at seemingly simple math problems is not terrible surprising. For some problems it can help to rephrase the question in such a way that the LLM goes through the individual steps of the calculation, instead of telling you the result directly.

              And more generally, LLMs aren’t exactly the best way to do math anyway. Human’s aren’t any good at it either, that’s why we invented calculators, which can do the same task with a lot less computing power and a lot more reliably. LLMs that can interact with external systems are already available behind paywall.

                • lloram239@feddit.de
                  4·
                  1 year ago

                  Humans are wrong all the time and confidently so. And it’s an apples and oranges competition anyway, as ChatGPT has to cover essentially all human knowledge, while a single human only knows a tiny subset of it. Nobody expects a human to know everything ChatGPT knows in the first place. A human put into ChatGPTs place would not perform well at all.

                  Humans make the mistake that they overestimate their own capabilities because they can find mistakes the AI makes, when they themselves wouldn’t be able to perform any better, at best they’d make different mistakes.

        • Communist@lemmy.mlEnglish
          811·
          1 year ago

          https://www.deepmind.com/blog/competitive-programming-with-alphacode

          People overestimate how much it matters that ai “doesn’t have the capacity to understand it’s output”

          Even if it doesn’t, is that a massive problem to overcome? There’s studies showing that if you have an ai list the potential problems with an output and then apply them to its own output it performs significantly better. Perhaps we’re just a recursive algorithm away from that.

      • bitsplease@lemmy.ml
        362·
        1 year ago

        stop getting all your info about AI and it’s current/upcoming capabilities from mainstream news media my dude lol

        We’re nowhere close to what you describe, and even we were, that wouldn’t be the same thing as “open source”, since you could only do it to code you have access to. You couldn’t - for example, use it to get a copy of the Reddit/Facebook server-side source code

      • mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        7·
        1 year ago

        You should know the difference between free software, open source software and source-visible software.

        I rank it Free>opensource>source availiable

      • WuTang @lemmy.ninjaEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        even if LLM were capable of this, don’t expect it to be any open. like everything we saw these last 25y, it starts free, it captivates you and you have to pay for. paying for is not a problem in general but the conditions how they delivers the service to you might be problematic.

        we don’t need AI for code, we need frugality and scope bounds.

      • utopiah@lemmy.ml
        3·
        1 year ago

        Downvoted because phrased as a technical solution. There might be a technical solution one day but until then, if it ever happens, it’s a moral problem. By phrasing it otherwise we diminish the value and efforts of countless people, including RMS, who did invest their time in FLOSS for an ideal. Again it might happen but until then we must bet on what is right, not an idealized future that prompts idleness because it is genuinely dangerous.

      • kevincox@lemmy.ml
        2·
        1 year ago

        I think we still have a long way to go before this is equivalent to “the preferred form for modification”. I’d give it at least 5 more years. It would be really cool if you could just say “Hello AI, please remove all ad code from Windows”. But I think it is going to be a long time until we get there.

        Also as this gets closer companies will get more defensive. It will become an arms race of obfuscating the code vs the AI understanding it.

        And still, free software that can be modified and the copies can be redistributed is a world away from being able to ask your AI to try and make these modifications yourself.

        On top of all of that don’t forget about DMCA where circumventing digital protections is a crime, even if you don’t commit any other crime.

      • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
        13·
        1 year ago

        Someone still has to know how to query the AI for it to spit out the code that actually does what we want it to.

        The only way current AI models would gain the abilities you described in any practical sense is if they joined forces with the neuroscientists to invent a brain implant that would allow a human brain to exploit the advantages of human intelligence and artificial intelligence models while shoring up the weaknesses of both.

      • notsharp@lemmy.world
        13·
        1 year ago

        if AI can create code by its own, then that’s the day when every white collar jobs will be replaced by AI.

  • QuentinCallaghan@sopuli.xyz
    82·
    1 year ago

    Seeing him without his beard and hair feels so wrong and even uncanny. I hope he has a lot more years ahead of him and he kicks cancer’s ass.

  • pH3ra@lemmy.ml
    69·
    1 year ago

    His page doesn’t load so it must be overwhelmed with visitors.
    Linux users all around the world who want to be close to him.
    When things matter, we are a good community guys <3

  • ptrck@lemmy.world
    64·
    1 year ago

    From what I read it slow growing and pretty manageable as far as cancer is manageable of course. Hope he’ll make a quick recovery, and start growing that magnificent beard back.

      • palordrolap@kbin.social
        21·
        1 year ago

        Yikes. Your comment was very easy to take out of context.

        Until I read back, it looked like you were saying Hank’s cancer was somehow back stronger than before (which would have to have been practically fresh breaking news), and not a comment on post-chemotherapy beard growth being different, perhaps stronger, than before.

        Follicular cancer doesn’t sound like it bodes as well for a beard as other kinds of lymphoma (like Hank’s was) but hey, you might still be right.

        (RMS is a controversial character in some regards. While I wouldn’t strictly wish the loss of a greybeard’s beard as cosmic correction of controversial behaviour, I’d much rather that than cancer. That’d be too far, Universe.)

  • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    49·
    1 year ago

    Eff cancer :(

    Hopefully some day we get to the point where it’s as rare as polio. I think that’s the same kind that Hank Green had though, IIRC. Hopefully it’s as manageable.

  • aba@lemmy.world
    282·
    1 year ago

    RMS is a hero he will survive. I really respect this dude commitment to his beliefs and values and everyone know that he is right despite any personal biases against him. Foss is the way.

  • electromage@lemm.ee
    3817·
    1 year ago

    Is he accepting medical treatments that require non-free software? Serious question, from what I know of him he would rather die. I don’t know if that changes when you’re actually faced with it though.

    • Captain Beyond@linkage.ds8.zone
      80·
      1 year ago

      Software freedom applies only to hardware you personally own. It wouldn’t even apply to machines you interact with but do not own (such as ATMs or kiosks) since you aren’t the one who agrees to the proprietary software license.

      Stallman himself explains it in his computing FAQ.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
        53·
        1 year ago

        If you would like to put my speech on the Internet, or distribute it in digital form, I insist on using the formats of the free software community: Ogg Vorbis or Ogg Speex

        Streaming is a kind of Internet distribution, so everything in the previous section applies. In particular, you must use only Ogg format or Matroska VP8 (Webm).

        http://xahlee.info/emacs/misc/rms_speech_requirement.html

        It seems reasonable to wonder if he’ll allow an MRI image of his cancer if that image isn’t saved in a Free format. I don’t know where he draws the line, but his requirements seem to go quite a bit beyond what he owns or interacts with.

    • anothermember@beehaw.org
      32·
      1 year ago

      He mentioned once that he can use a bank that doesn’t use free software because he’s not logging in to it to do general purpose computing. I think the same would probably apply to medical treatments.

      • gibson@sopuli.xyz
        101·
        1 year ago

        I believe he does extend it to JavaScript however, so if he were required to run unfree javascript on a webpage relating to his treatment that could be a problem.

          • Captain Beyond@linkage.ds8.zone
            14·
            1 year ago

            The code merely being “available” isn’t the same thing as the user having the legal freedom to modify and share it. Besides, that’s not always the case; sometimes JavaScript is minified, obfuscated, and packed in ways that make it effectively no different than any other compiled program.

            Note that source code is “the preferred form for making modifications” so obfuscated code is by definition not “source.”

  • Bali@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    192·
    1 year ago

    Yes Stallman have issues but you dont wish someone dead! I know someone who is currently battling cancer and on chemotherapy and its an awful situation just to see it. I hope RMS can beat the cancer.