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Dear HN - at what point does the proclivity towards a philosophy transition to insanity? Is it when an FSF zealot refuses medical treatment demanding the source

Dear HN - at what point does the proclivity towards a philosophy transition to insanity? Is it when an FSF zealot refuses medical treatment demanding the source code of the firmware used in his life-saving medical device? Is it when he refuses to use the roads paved by insert paving device here running closed source software?

grawlinson 10y ago
I think this part of his notes would be relevant: >I firmly refuse to install non-free software or tolerate its installed presence on my computer or on computers set up for me. >However, if I am visiting somewhere and the machines available nearby happen to contain non-free software, through no doing of mine, I don't refuse to touch them. I will use them briefly for tasks such as browsing. This limited usage doesn't give my assent to the software's license, or make me responsible its being present in the computer, or make me the possessor of a copy of it, so I don't see an ethical obligation to refrain from this. Of course, I explain to the local people why they should migrate the machines to free software, but I don't push them hard, because annoying them is not the way to convince them. >Likewise, I don't need to worry about what software is in a kiosk, pay phone, or ATM that I am using. I hope their owners migrate them to free software, for their sake, but there's no need for me to refuse to touch them until then. (I do consider what those machines and their owners might do with my personal data, but that's a different issue, which would arise just the same even if they did use free software. My response to that issue is to minimize those activities which give them any data about me.) >That's my policy about using a machine once in a while. If I were to use it for an hour every day, that would no longer be "once in a while" — it would be regular use. At that point, I would start to feel the heavy hand of any nonfree software in that computer, and feel the duty to arrange to use a liberated computer instead. While his views can be seen as extreme, there's a hint of open-mindedness scattered throughout.
Bartweiss 10y ago
I think it's fairly clear he's not at insanity yet. Yes, the man is a proper ideologue, in a way that most of us will never be about anything. But even in this list, he mentions using computers with non-free BIOS options, accepting trivial-case non-free Javascript, and otherwise conceding to basic common sense. He even acknowledges that he'll use totally closed software in incidental contexts like a library computer! He goes much further out of his way than most of us would, certainly. We all have standards for 'acceptable inconvenience', and his standards would drive me mad. But even Stallman isn't practicing the kind of zealotry those examples imply.

grawlinson 10y ago

I think this part of his notes would be relevant: >I firmly refuse to install non-free software or tolerate its installed presence on my computer or on computers set up for me. >However, if I am visiting somewhere and the machines available nearby happen to contain non-free software, through no doing of mine, I don't refuse to touch them. I will use them briefly for tasks such as browsing. This limited usage doesn't give my assent to the software's license, or make me responsible its being present in the computer, or make me the possessor of a copy of it, so I don't see an ethical obligation to refrain from this. Of course, I explain to the local people why they should migrate the machines to free software, but I don't push them hard, because annoying them is not the way to convince them. >Likewise, I don't need to worry about what software is in a kiosk, pay phone, or ATM that I am using. I hope their owners migrate them to free software, for their sake, but there's no need for me to refuse to touch them until then. (I do consider what those machines and their owners might do with my personal data, but that's a different issue, which would arise just the same even if they did use free software. My response to that issue is to minimize those activities which give them any data about me.) >That's my policy about using a machine once in a while. If I were to use it for an hour every day, that would no longer be "once in a while" — it would be regular use. At that point, I would start to feel the heavy hand of any nonfree software in that computer, and feel the duty to arrange to use a liberated computer instead. While his views can be seen as extreme, there's a hint of open-mindedness scattered throughout.

Bartweiss 10y ago

I think it's fairly clear he's not at insanity yet. Yes, the man is a proper ideologue, in a way that most of us will never be about anything. But even in this list, he mentions using computers with non-free BIOS options, accepting trivial-case non-free Javascript, and otherwise conceding to basic common sense. He even acknowledges that he'll use totally closed software in incidental contexts like a library computer! He goes much further out of his way than most of us would, certainly. We all have standards for 'acceptable inconvenience', and his standards would drive me mad. But even Stallman isn't practicing the kind of zealotry those examples imply.