6 ms·

I think he has a point in many things. But sadly, he also criticizes every alternative like Google, Microsoft and even some linux distros. It's scary but every

• sotojuan 10y ago
  Who's "we"? Honestly even after Snowden and the rest the amount of people who really care about privacy and software freedom is tiny, even among technologists and programmers. Most people stop when they realize being "free" means barely using anything, for better or for worse.
  • simbalion 10y ago
    It doesn't mean "barely using anything", it means changing the computer scene from the Macy's bastardization that it has become thanks to corporations and get-rich-quick schemers, and bringing back the community spirit that was spawned in the early days of MIT computer clubs. There's a way of thinking that was born or embraced in those free-software circles which the majority of our consumer world is unaware of, and if we could teach it to them it could have dramatic and positive effects globally. But the corporations don't want that, and they often turn the volume on their ads up to 11 to drown us out.
    • throwanem 10y ago
      > There's a way of thinking that was born or embraced in those free-software circles which ...relies on everyone involved being technically savvy at a very high level in order to survive. Most people aren't like us and that's okay. Unless you're Richard Stallman, I suppose.
      • simbalion 10y ago
        That's not okay, actually. Especially since the people who are "like us" aren't the ones running the world. It's not okay by any stretch of the imagination that there is a gigantic intelligence gap in the human race. It's very very bad.
        • throwanem 10y ago
          It's not an intelligence gap. It's a question of priorities. For a Stallman-style world to work, everyone has to be not only able, but willing, to drop the business at hand and spend as much time as necessary, as often as necessary, doing what is basically sysadmin work. The nature of the libre stack, and its interaction with hardware, ensure this is necessary quite a lot. Put simply, most people have more valuable things to do with their time than sysadmin their personal hardware. Even most sysadmins do! It is incumbent upon the free software movement to recognize and accommodate this fact. The inherent penalty for failure to do so is irrelevance, however ideologically pure.
          • simbalion 10y ago
            Respectfully, I disagree. One doesn't need the knowledge of a systems administrator to use free software instead of proprietary software. The Debian OS ships with lots of free software to do practically everything you'd ever want to do on your computer. We are 90% of the way to a "Stallman-style" world being a realistic possibility for the 'average user'. Only a few key applications are missing or under-represented, which should be seen as an opportunity for new developers to cut their teeth on some valuable projects. There's more to it than an intelligence gap. There's a propoganda issue where people are being convinced that the subject matter is "too advanced" for them, which is a lie that would-be masters tell the people they wish to enslave. (this has been going on for centuries). But the intelligence gap does play a role and can be traced back to our neglected public education system and the greed of free market capitalism.
            • throwanem 10y ago
              > One doesn't need the knowledge of a systems administrator to use free software instead of proprietary software. That's not my experience, nor is it reflected in what I hear from people who do still use Linux on their personal machines. Indeed, Dr. Stallman himself was unable to get VGA output working when he was on the stage at HOPE last month - in the end, the AV staff had to point a camera at his laptop. It's also unreasonable to conclude, from the experience of programmers who actually are prepared to invest considerable time and effort into reworking the software we use, that free software is at, or indeed, near, a point of readiness to support the needs of "average users". One of Dr. Stallman's examples was a comparison between Photoshop and the GIMP; although he chose not to cast it in precisely those terms, it was obvious to which software packages to which he referred. Unfortunately, this comparison, while well suited to the ideological requirements of the Free Software Foundation and those of Dr. Stallman's talk, is not well founded in fact; the reason Photoshop remains the de facto standard for image editing is not, as Dr. Stallman would have it, mere foolish and contemptible intransigence on the part of "average users", but rather because Photoshop has for many years had capabilities which the GIMP still fails even to approximate. Even in the realm of text handling, a task central to the requirements of any graphic designer and almost any other sort of user, today's GIMP falls far short of the mark set by a version of Photoshop from well over a decade ago. This sort of failure cannot be explained by a notional "intelligence gap", or by conspiracy theories around class warfare and capitalist propaganda. If a problem like this were of sufficient concern to the Free Software Foundation to be worth solving, solved it would be, and if achieving such a solution required some modification of an ideology which had proven too strict in its purity to address the needs of reality, such modification would have long since occurred. That it has not, and that fundamental issues of usability and functionality remain in the software FSF advertises as being ready in all respects to replace its proprietary alternatives, demonstrates that, for Dr. Stallman and his organization, ideological concerns are paramount, and outweigh to negligibility the concerns which matter to the same "average users" on whose behalf FSF partisans purport to work. The occasional populism of FSF rhetoric is thus exposed as nothing more than an empty claim, trivially made when convenient and just as trivially discarded when it conflicts with the weird, chilly ideological "hackers uber alles" elitism which, while appealing to few, is at least an honest expression of Stallman's and FSF's true position. Unfortunately, as I said before, the price of purity in such an ideology is irrelevance, and indeed irrelevance is precisely the position in which FSF finds itself today. As long as ideology remains paramount, this will not, indeed cannot, change.
  • technofiend 10y ago
    You had James Bamford writing about phone call monitoring 40 years ago in Puzzle Palace. Nobody cared. You had Cypherpunks on the cover of Wired wearing masks with their PGP key IDs and saying encrypt all your emails. Nobody cared. You had the EFF compromising with the Clinton I administration on Clipper and key escrow. Nobody cared. People of a certain age have discovered the value in ephemeral services after Facebook and other services with long memories have proven to potentially cache embarrassing posts for future employers but there's no cyber utopia with anonymous communication empowered by a vetted web of trust because nobody cares. Just snapchats you hope the recipient doesn't capture.
    • schoen 10y ago
      > You had the EFF compromising with the Clinton I administration on Clipper and key escrow. Nobody cared. Are you sure you're not thinking of CALEA?
      • technofiend 10y ago
        I just remember at the time being shocked that the EFF had endorsed a compromise but no longer remember the details. I'll have to google for it and see if I can find it now.
        • schoen 10y ago
          There was a compromise around CALEA which was one of the precipitating factors in EFF's split into CDT and EFF. As an EFF member during the early Crypto Wars and a staff member since just before September 11, I'd be surprised to hear about a compromise on Clipper; I haven't heard any of the 1990s-era employees mention such a thing.
    • rakoo 10y ago
      Survivor bias. For every correct prediction you had 100 wrong predictions, and I'd venture it's the same today.
• zepto 10y ago
  He's right to criticize Google and Microsoft. There is no way in which they are morally superior to Apple.
  • aianus 10y ago
    I think there's a huge difference between Android's Play Store + sideloading + other app stores + unlocked bootloader and the ultra locked down iPhone.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  • Jerry2 10y ago
    His criticism of Google is awfully scant. https://stallman.org/google.html https://stallman.org/google.html
• awqrre 10y ago
  Google should do the right thing and allow any Linux applications to be installed on Android
  • mchahn 10y ago
    Google allows absolutely anything to be installed on Android. There's a setting for that.
    • awqrre 10y ago
      Sorry, I must have missed it, what is that setting called?
      • mchahn 10y ago
        settings/security/Unknown sources
        • awqrre 10y ago
          That doesn't allow you to install any Linux application, it only allows you to install Android apps that you find outside the Play Store...
          • mchahn 10y ago
            All applications need to be ported to a platform before they can run on it. What linux app do you want on Android? It can be ported. You can't do that on ios.
            • awqrre 10y ago
              I don't want to port anything... let say I want to run Gimp... I want to run Gimp without having to port it (or without anyone having to port it), that is the whole point. Google could make that easy since Android is based on Linux...
• jaredklewis 10y ago
  It's easy to understand why people don't listen to him: everything he says is so acerbic and barbed, that anyone who doesn't already agree with him will be immediately turned off by his writing. RMS is the Richard Dawkins of free software. If you are already an atheist and enjoy making fun of others, Richard Dawkins is a fun read. If you are a religious person with some doubts, Dawkins is unlikely to convince you of much since he appears to revel so much in calling you an idiot. RMS, like Dawkins, has no sympathy for those with a different point of view. He immediately dismisses anyone not on his team, which is not a great way to gain followers. If RMS cares about the free software movement, my advice to him would be to stop writing and let others with more empathy handle the evangelizing.