4 ms·

alt-text: One of the survivors, poking around in the ruins with the point of a spear, uncovers a singed photo of Richard Stallman. They stare in silence. "This,

alt-text: One of the survivors, poking around in the ruins with the point of a spear, uncovers a singed photo of Richard Stallman. They stare in silence. "This," one of them finally says, "This is a man who BELIEVED in something." Just yesterday I was explaining to a friend that Stallman is not crazy; rather there is a continuum from convenience to freedom and Stallman believes most of us are way too far on the "left", so he goes as far to the "right" as possible to show us we've gone to far. He pays for his freedoms with his conveniences and we pay for our conveniences with our freedoms. Things are much more nuanced and multidimensional than this. Not trying to start a flame war here.

PaulRobinson 10y ago
You might not want to start a flame war, but you know one is perhaps inevitable on this topic. I've met RMS several times (he even stayed at my place once, and yes the rider asking hosts not to buy him a parrot is real and long-standing), and I came it at from a different angle: I was a contributor to a BSD OS some yonks ago. As a result we had a good-natured conversation about some of the conflicts between GPL and BSD and he's actually a lot more forgiving than people portray him or that argument. He's grounded in more reality than people give him credit for. Yes, he supports and advocates GPL, but he'd rather see code released as BSD/MIT than not released at all - at least that was the impression I was left with. There are two things that tend to get the anti-GPL crowds back up, which on your continuum I'm not sure fit easily. Firstly, there is the right for a programmer to be paid passively for the result of work done by their software. RMS broadly (and I'm paraphrasing ridiculously here) thinks that you should be paid for the hours you work, the software should be Free, you don't earn a right to keep it closed and sell access to it through licenses, etc. Fine, but that would pretty much shut down the programming economy. People regularly write code because they or their employer believes a customer is going to pay for it, and use that as leverage. Obviously. If we were to outlaw such a model - and it would require statues to make a reality, laws that run contrary to free-market liberalism - a large number of developers would be laid off. That's OK, says RMS, because society will be better off. However, Turkeys do not vote for Thanksgiving/Christmas, and I want the _freedom_ to chose to work in businesses with economic models like that. I think interestingly if Amazon, Facebook, Google, Uber and all similar firms (e-comms, social networks, search engines, etc.), released all their code, the market would not move much. The value was first created by innovating through their code base, but now the value is in the systems, brands, and relationships those firms have been able to build. Curiously, it's possible we are now in a scenario where closed source code can help a startup scale, but once they're at scale, there is no value in keeping the code closed, and making it open could benefit the companies (through "volunteer commits"), as well as the wider economy. We are seeing the tip of this in the dev code space (.NET et al). Secondly, there is a weird line after which RMS does not care about software freedom quite so much. For example, in one talk he gave I attended, he stated that because he does not wish to modify the code in his microwave, he is not bothered if that code is free or not. I think that's a weak (and arbitrary) line, that is inconsistent with the core argument and really doesn't sit on the continuum. Either all code wants to be free, or only some code does. And if only some code does, well, you can't go around telling people what does and does not. Perhaps he's revised his position since then (a decade ago now), but I know it was something that troubled me about his argument. And when somebody's economic and political philosophy does not quite stand up to not-very-rigorous arguments about the economic or political impact, from the very same people you're trying to convince, it's going to be a hard sell. TL;DR: people should be free to sell or give away software as they see fit, and let market forces decide (as they have already in say, Internet infrastructure software markets such as server OSes, web/mail servers, virtualisation, and so on).
- tremon 10y ago
  RMS broadly (and I'm paraphrasing ridiculously here) thinks that you should be paid for the hours you work, the software should be Free, you don't earn a right to keep it closed and sell access to it through licenses, etc. Fine, but that would pretty much shut down the programming economy. I don't think it would. The "programming economy" could instead flourish on bespoke software solutions instead of the monoculture we have now. Perhaps even governments (gasp!) would pick up the maintenance of a general OS, since it is in their interest to keep their citizens safe online.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    The US could use such an OS to run healthcare.gov.

PaulRobinson 10y ago

You might not want to start a flame war, but you know one is perhaps inevitable on this topic. I've met RMS several times (he even stayed at my place once, and yes the rider asking hosts not to buy him a parrot is real and long-standing), and I came it at from a different angle: I was a contributor to a BSD OS some yonks ago. As a result we had a good-natured conversation about some of the conflicts between GPL and BSD and he's actually a lot more forgiving than people portray him or that argument. He's grounded in more reality than people give him credit for. Yes, he supports and advocates GPL, but he'd rather see code released as BSD/MIT than not released at all - at least that was the impression I was left with. There are two things that tend to get the anti-GPL crowds back up, which on your continuum I'm not sure fit easily. Firstly, there is the right for a programmer to be paid passively for the result of work done by their software. RMS broadly (and I'm paraphrasing ridiculously here) thinks that you should be paid for the hours you work, the software should be Free, you don't earn a right to keep it closed and sell access to it through licenses, etc. Fine, but that would pretty much shut down the programming economy. People regularly write code because they or their employer believes a customer is going to pay for it, and use that as leverage. Obviously. If we were to outlaw such a model - and it would require statues to make a reality, laws that run contrary to free-market liberalism - a large number of developers would be laid off. That's OK, says RMS, because society will be better off. However, Turkeys do not vote for Thanksgiving/Christmas, and I want the _freedom_ to chose to work in businesses with economic models like that. I think interestingly if Amazon, Facebook, Google, Uber and all similar firms (e-comms, social networks, search engines, etc.), released all their code, the market would not move much. The value was first created by innovating through their code base, but now the value is in the systems, brands, and relationships those firms have been able to build. Curiously, it's possible we are now in a scenario where closed source code can help a startup scale, but once they're at scale, there is no value in keeping the code closed, and making it open could benefit the companies (through "volunteer commits"), as well as the wider economy. We are seeing the tip of this in the dev code space (.NET et al). Secondly, there is a weird line after which RMS does not care about software freedom quite so much. For example, in one talk he gave I attended, he stated that because he does not wish to modify the code in his microwave, he is not bothered if that code is free or not. I think that's a weak (and arbitrary) line, that is inconsistent with the core argument and really doesn't sit on the continuum. Either all code wants to be free, or only some code does. And if only some code does, well, you can't go around telling people what does and does not. Perhaps he's revised his position since then (a decade ago now), but I know it was something that troubled me about his argument. And when somebody's economic and political philosophy does not quite stand up to not-very-rigorous arguments about the economic or political impact, from the very same people you're trying to convince, it's going to be a hard sell. TL;DR: people should be free to sell or give away software as they see fit, and let market forces decide (as they have already in say, Internet infrastructure software markets such as server OSes, web/mail servers, virtualisation, and so on).

tremon 10y ago
RMS broadly (and I'm paraphrasing ridiculously here) thinks that you should be paid for the hours you work, the software should be Free, you don't earn a right to keep it closed and sell access to it through licenses, etc. Fine, but that would pretty much shut down the programming economy. I don't think it would. The "programming economy" could instead flourish on bespoke software solutions instead of the monoculture we have now. Perhaps even governments (gasp!) would pick up the maintenance of a general OS, since it is in their interest to keep their citizens safe online.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  The US could use such an OS to run healthcare.gov.