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Richard Stallman: "I Wished I Had Killed Myself"
- ars 17y agoHe needs to get married and have a kid. He doesn't want to because he thinks it's too easy, but he's still a human.
- dasht 17y agoHe is on record as not wanting to have a kid because in his view the planet is over-populated. Also, I don't fully understand (due to lack of inquiry into it) his view of marriage but I'm fairly certain that "thinks it's too easy" is not accurate.
- prpon 17y agoI guess Richard Dawkins' selfish gene theory and Free Software Foundation don't go together. :)
- mrkurt 17y agoGenerating a baby isn't the only way to "have a kid", though. I haven't really seen what he's said, but that reasoning always rings hollow to me.
- jimmyjim 17y agohttp://www.craigslist.org/about/best/bos/533096562.html http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/bos/533096562.html I'm not 100% sure if that was put up by him, but I've been told that it was.
- jongraehl 17y agoLet's assume that's his post. I'd think Stallman would have no problem finding an interested woman, provided he emphasized his fame rather than a self-described lack of "success". All the people grabbing cheap cool points by dumping on the man are ultimately making it harder for him to get a date, and that's just needlessly cruel.
- dgabriel 17y agoHis fame is very subjective. He's not famous in a way that is attractive to the average woman, hence his difficulty in finding an ideal mate. I would presume that if Stallman has romantic troubles, it's due to something other than people dumping on him.
- jimmyjames 17y agoYou think he's not finding a woman because he's not famous in a way that's attractive to women? Hilarious. How about this: he has a very arrogant personality, the ego the size of a blimp and it's just impossible to have a conversation with him unless you agree with every single word he says.
- dgabriel 17y agoI don't think that at all. I was responding to a post that claimed RMS should use his fame to attract women. I doubt that will work for a number of obvious reasons.
- mukyu 16y agoI've seen him bite his toenails in front of a large audience. I'm sure he's fun at the dinner table.
- bjg 17y agoI'm not trying to be mean, but he came and talked at my school and he looks as unkempt in person as he does in pictures. I really think if he took better care of himself he would be able to find an interested girl.
- watmough 17y agoOh, there's a woman out there for him somewhere. There's always at least one. One will fall for the Stallman charms, unkempt and all. Thanks RMS, for all that you've done, and keep the fight going.
- pufuwozu 17y agoThat personal has actually been posted on his website: http://stallman.org/extra/personal.html http://stallman.org/extra/personal.html With the addition of: (Currently for amusement only.)
- kunley 17y agoThis point of view is miserably broken. Yes, planet is overpopulated, in Asia & Africa. On the contrary, by having kids in a highly developed country and by giving them education one is doing a favor to this planet & its culture.
- koningrobot 17y agoHe should definitely not have a kid. He seems of the opinion that life is painful, and he has wished he had never been born (well, he has wished he had "killed himself when [he] was born", but there's little difference). To "have a kid" is to create another person who might well wish to never have been born, another person who will have to decide whether or not it is justified to bring kids into this painful world. I am glad that RMS is so honest about it. Most people cover up their unhappiness.
- Tichy 17y agoA classic dilemma, but I suppose then nobody should have kids, by that logic. Or only stupid people should have kids, who are unable to see the dark sides of life.
- duncanj 17y agoNo, that's not what was said. It's about RMS not wanting to replicate his miserable experience for someone else.
- Tichy 17y agoDid RMS say that, or just that he himself had a miserable experience? My point is, if only people with thoroughly happy lives should have kids, then probably only stupid people would have kids.
- koningrobot 17y agoNo, RMS didn't say that, I did. I don't know how RMS feels about this; whether he doesn't want kids for the sake of the kids, or for the sake of those living now. I myself am indeed of the opinion that no one should have kids. Life is a very mixed bag. Nonexistent people don't suffer the bad, and don't miss the good. Everybody wins! Or rather, nobody loses. :-)
- Tichy 17y ago
- derwiki 17y agoSeems to me that without the programmers who went the commercial route (Gates et al), computers wouldn't be as widely used and his impact wouldn't be as big. Or that someone else wouldn't have stepped up in his absence. And statements like those quoted in the article seem just a wee bit overdramatic.
- flatline 17y agoStallman is nothing if not dramatic;) I have trouble imagining that computers would not be as widely used today, not without corporate backing and innovation, but without the kinds of hijinks that have kept the Wintel near-monopoly in place for so long. It was a bunch of hackers, not suits, who started the personal computer revolution.
- CamperBob 17y agoThere's no way in hell every Tom, Dick, and Harry would have their own 3000 MHz computer if it weren't for that Wintel near-monopoly, though. Wintel doesn't get the credit they deserve. Everybody running Linux on anything faster than an 80386 owes Bill and Andy lunch, at least.
- anonjon 17y agomaybe Andy, i am not sure about Bill.
- _delirium 17y agoI'm not sure that's true, though it's a counterfactual so hard to prove either way. I think without Wintel, probably we would've had more competition and innovation in the area, and cheaper/faster machines. There was plenty of speeding up and broadening of home-computer access before Wintel came on the scene, with competition between Amiga, Atari, Apple, etc. And even in Wintel, innovation sped up noticeably once AMD managed to temporarily break Intel's stranglehold, and inject a bit of competition into the x86 market.
- 17y ago
- doki_pen 17y agoThe comments in the blog talk about arrogance and how someone else would have done what RMS did if he didn't exist. They also complain that him being a "nutjob" has actually done harm to freedom. This line of thinking is dead wrong. It takes someone precisely like RMS to stand for his ideal and dedicate his life to what he believes. I, personally, feel a great debt to the man.
- dasht 17y agoIt's "funny" that people see his statement, that perhaps it's better he didn't die as an infant because he's done some good, as arrogant. He could be paraphrased as saying something like "I've experienced such misery that sometimes I wish I wasn't here at all but on the other hand I think I've done more good than harm for others and there is some comfort in that." How that's arrogant is beyond me. I can understand people having the opinion that, no, he's done more harm than good - but he's not arrogant for thinking otherwise.
- mrkurt 17y ago"I think I've done more good than harm" is vastly different than "in terms of the effect on the world, it's very good that I've lived", though. A little humility goes a long way.
- johngalt 17y agoEither computers would be useless novelties or they would be mainstream and lose the hacker/counterculture status. Those are the only two options. There is no way that every person on earth was going to care about source code. Progress is still progress even if it's not what you want. There is plenty of fun to be had still in technology, just don't get married to a philosophy. I learned that the hardway. In the early days I ran a BBS. When the Internet became mainstream I remember thinking "how do I compete?" I redoubled my efforts: upgrading modems, adding drives/door games, increasing my software library, etc.... All the time thinking "where's the 'community feel' on the Inet?" By the late 90s I realized the problem was me and not the world.
- dgabriel 17y agoI cut my teeth on the BBS scene in southern new England, and 94/95 was quite a time of change, no?
- r0s 17y agoEither computers would be useless novelties or they would be mainstream and lose the hacker/counterculture status. Those are the only two options. Maybe you don't look at your cell phone or nintendoDS and think "hmm, there must be some way to run irc on this thing". Maybe you don't care anymore, but there are huge communities who do. Maybe the spirit of openness is fundamental to the tools themselves?
- petercooper 17y agoIt's a real shame that inventor of the time machine, Leo Schultz, travelled back in time from 2042 and killed himself as a child. We'll never have a time machine now :-(
- JCThoughtscream 17y agoI don't see Stallman's statement as to whether his birth had a good impact on the world or not as necessarily arrogant. Arguably, that's a question everybody needs to or ends up asking themselves: on balance, has my existence been a positive one? While there might've been an open software advocate without Stallman, it can't be seriously said that the world would've been better off without Stallman's advocacy. And thus, on balance, the world's better off with Stallman than without.
- flipper 17y agoI for one am very glad RMS existed to write emacs and save us all from vi.
- apu 17y agoI'm glad RMS existed to write emacs and give vi users someone to look down on ;-)
- strait 17y agoI'm glad that I get to enjoy the never ending drama of emacs vs vi. It's better than watching re-runs of 7th Heaven.
- apotheon 17y ago> It's better than watching re-runs of 7th Heaven. What isn't better than that?
- astine 17y agoI'm glad I have voper-mode +vimpulse so that I don't have to decide between them. :)
- jrockway 17y agoYou should also install ispell-mode.
- dzlobin 17y agoI'm glad he lived, and I'm thankful for his contributions. But holy shit, he makes me sad everytime I see him or read about him. This guy needs to cheer up.
- Herring 17y agoHe's about the worst PR possible for free software. I like his code & I mostly drink the kool aid, I do, but he really needs to let Eben Moglen do the talking..
- codyrobbins 17y agoHe needs a makeover. Or to be on ‘Dancing with the Stars’. Something to make him feel good about himself. I’m half-joking but I’m also half serious.
- axod 17y agoHe's a martyr. Feeling 'persecuted' is part and parcel of that. He probably wouldn't be satisfied if he was happy.
- yesbabyyes 17y agoOf course Stallman can relax and have fun. Here, he's dancing to Soulja Boy's "Crank Dat" together with a few other MIT people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C6r6fG4k40 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C6r6fG4k40
- donaq 17y agoSure, in his absence others may have stepped up to the job, but in this world, he did. We can sit and imagine all we want that with a different leader, FOSS would be better. But, that doesn't change the fact that we have him to thank for so very much. From the comments on the OP's blog. :)
- patrickgzill 17y agoAn appropriate quote from George Bernard Shaw: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress depends on the unreasonable man."
- apotheon 17y agoStallman's hubris is shocking -- and I'm not talking about his claim that the world is a better place for him having lived. I'm talking about this line of shit: > I’m the last survivor of a dead culture.
- jf 17y agoThat quote makes a lot more sense when taken in context. It's from the 1983 epilogue to Hackers. In 1983, there was no "free software" as we have today. No FSF, no EFF, no Creative Commons. Additionally, Stallman's interview is at the end of a book about the guys who started "hacker culture". These guys did some amazing stuff: they physically modified one of their computers to add new machine instructions, wrote editors, compilers and games from scratch, etc, etc. Then they made their code available for free. When I read that quote in the book, I interpreted it as Stallman expressing sadness over the loss of hacker culture.
- ErrantX 17y agoI think that is what apotheon means! Hacker culture is far from dead; it is alive and well, just different. It's just him being stuck in the "glorious past" (nothing really wrong with that) and assuming that hackers should be working with computers on that sort of level. Things move on; if we still had to do all that computing wouldn't have moved on very fast :P I heartily disagree that the culture is materially different - it's just spread out a bit more (instead of being on the university campus' etc.)
- apotheon 17y agoHacker culture not only is alive and well -- it was alive and well through those years, too. It was just less visible, and since Stallman was moving through different circles, it wouldn't have felt as much to him like it was all clustered around his immediate vicinity. It is to some extent in human nature to assume that what's happening around someone is what's happening everywhere -- but that's really no excuse for declaring himself the last of his breed as he did. In fact, I'd say that the rise of the cypherpunks was a stronger resurgence in the hacker culture tide than Stallman's generation, and actually far more committed to freedom in an essential sense. The fact things change doesn't mean the good stuff has all died off. I think we're a lot better off for the modern state of hacker culture than if there was still the kind of hacker culture that existed Way Back When. Concepts of freedom, inquiry, and improvement that are central to a hacker culture have become more refined and encompassing than they were in those early days, which is pretty much what happens with everything that sees long-term success; it starts out less well-defined, and feeling more "special" because of its rarefied nature, then grows more widespread, better defined, and more generally applicable, thanks to the efforts of people who pick up where a previous generation left off to add their own efforts to the continuing evolution of the movement. Far from being the last of his breed, he went from being an early visionary to a late relic, from what I can see. I might not have used such harsh terms for it, but his own statements about being the last of his kind pretty much completes the picture of Stallman as a dinosaur who has died and is too stubbornly attached to his own illusions to realize it. Yeah, the culture isn't materially different. It has simply continued developing. If it had remained exactly the same as it was for Stallman's early peers, that wouldn't have been success. It would have been stagnation. He should learn to take a cue from people like Ken Thompson, who has managed to remain relevant and continue to contribute fresh new ideas to the state of general purpose operating system design all these years. Yes, advocates for freedom in our software development model are of critical importance; I'm not arguing otherwise. I think, though, that Stallman's apparent idea that such advocacy should focus on trying to recapture a communal sharing model that worked for a very small number of people who mostly knew each other, at least peripherally, is naive at best. Furthermore, the way Thompson and his spiritual descendants lead by example does almost as much for effective advocacy as the actual advocates (e.g., Bruce Perens and Theo de Raadt, to name a couple out of many -- who are, unlike Stallman, well-known for being currently contributing developers as well as advocates, thus lending credence to their statements even when they're abrasive in the extreme as de Raadt can sometimes be). Looking at things with a critical eye, Stallman is the only guy I can think of who is granted so much relevance as both a developer and an advocate for freedom in software use and development whose achievements are always described in the past tense.
- jimmyjames 17y agoI think that a great free open source leader has already been born but he committed suicide, so instead, now we have Stallman.
- tomkinstinch 17y agoThe linked article [1] is worth reading. 1. http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/04/ff_hackers/all/1 http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/04/ff_hackers/all/1
- j_baker 17y ago"This "pain" that Stallman says he has endured makes his decision to champion tirelessly freedom and free software for all these decades all the more remarkable." Alright, I realize this might be a bad statement to make on this subject... but seriously? He's a free software advocate. It's not like he's Ghandi going on a hunger strike or Martin Luther King Jr going to jail over his beliefs.
- astrec 17y agoStallman agrees with you: "I hesitate to exaggerate the importance of this little puddle of freedom," he says. "Because the more well known and conventional areas of working for freedom and a better society are tremendously important. I wouldn't say that free software is as important as they are. It's the responsibility I undertook, because it dropped in my lap and I saw a way I could do something about it. But, for example, to end police brutality, to end the war on drugs, to end the kinds of racism we still have, to help everyone have a comfortable life, to protect the rights of people who do abortions, to protect us from theocracy, these are tremendously important issues, far more important than what I do. I just wish I knew how to do something about them." - Free As In Freedom by Sam Williams (p66 or p73 depending on version).
- apotheon 17y agoI think the importance of freedom as it applies to software is often underrated. The idea of freedom in software use and development is really a near-perfect model in microcosm of intellectual freedom as a whole, and there's little that can compare with that for importance. I also think the importance of Stallman as applied to freedom of use and development of software is often overstated, though.
- Osmose 17y agoI know very little about Stallman beyond his role in the GNU Project. What pain is he referring to that makes him wish that he had never been born? The loss of hacker culture?
- fnid2 17y agoI'm wondering too. He has a kind of "Woe is me" attitude, but all I know of him is that he eats his toe skin in front of his audience. I also don't know if his existence has had a net positive effect. Free software he advocates is used to power robots, missiles, and other weapons that kill many people. It has also taken money from developers who write good software and shifted it to middlemen who sell services for free code, which limits the viability of writing code and the financial options for hackers to put a roof over their heads and food in their mouths. If you really want to help hackers and keep the hacker culture alive, teach the world that software has value and is worth paying for.
- jawn 17y agoAfter reading this I felt a deep sense of pity for RMS. Even if he was only referring to his perceived lack of belonging, openly fantasizing about suicide is not the sign of someone in a healthy emotional state. I hope very much that he has grown past this point his life.