4 ms·

I am not sure who this guy is, but he seems a little out of this world.

by roesel 10y ago

elchief 10y ago
have you heard of GNU?
tluyben2 10y ago
He is quite famous in software circles [0]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman
joe563323 10y ago
RMS is a legend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman. Every one would be living in a little bit of a different world and all the computer tech guys would be living in a completely different world with out RMS.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- lightedman 10y ago
  "Every one would be living in a little bit of a different world and all the computer tech guys would be living in a completely different world with out RMS." Someone else would've likely done the same thing sooner or later.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    Free software was not necessarily an inevitability, but efforts to accelerate that certainly pushed it forward. The problem now is this rampant hostility towards all proprietary software of any form for any purpose. The FSF is still fighting the same pointless war against proprietary operating systems when the real threat is IoT junk, cars, and medical devices full of unauditable code.
  - arrakeen 10y ago
    free software and the web both happened at the right place and the right time. do you really think the web would be what it is today if you needed to buy a $10k webserver from IBM to host a site? sure, someone else would likely have eventually come up with the concept of free software, but would it have missed the critical mass of the early web? the idea that free software didn't play a large part in the modern technology landscape is just wrong.
    - lightedman 10y ago
      "but would it have missed the critical mass of the early web" You should probably hold a slightly lower opinion of your fellow human. We're rather well-known to go after any possibility of free things, and critical mass was more along the lines of the days of Napster (when, hey, FREE MUSIC!)
orblivion 10y ago
He serves an important purpose. He lays forth a philosophical framework for software freedom, and makes predictions that people don't take seriously and gives advice that nobody would ever practically follow. He also has this annoying habit of being right in the end. He represents an ideal we'll never reach, but we should always aim back toward.
- ploggingdev 10y ago
  > He also has this annoying habit of being right in the end I'm not familiar with his predictions, so can you give a few examples.
  - danieldk 10y ago
    https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html This seemed like a far-fetched dystopia when I first read it. Now, Kindle et al. are not far away from this. I also remember reading some piece from Stallman on software patents, from the eighties or early nineties. Well before software patent trolls, etc.
    - vic-traill 10y ago
      This. Very much echoes my thoughts when I first read Right to Read, which I believe was at a job I left early 2000, so sometime before that. And then the scenario stated becoming, if not true, the a helluva lot closer. And the irony of Orwell books being removed remotely from Kindle's in 2009 [0] was evident and tied into the dystopia feel of it all. [0] http://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html?_r=0&referer= http://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18...
    - blakeyrat 10y ago
      The first patent troll was around in 1879: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/11/05/the-original-patent-troll.aspx http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/11/05/the-origina... Yeah, it wasn't a software patent, but. It's not hard to see something that's happened before and "predict" it could happen again.
ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
Stallman warned people in detail about the dangers of putting everything in "the cloud" years and years before everyone started putting their photos in the cloud, getting hacked, and celebrities' nude photos being leaked on the internet. If you think he's crazy about a topic just wait 5 years, you'll admit he's right.
- briandear 10y ago
  We could make the same argument against cars and airplanes. Before those were invented exactly zero people died in auto or airplane accidents. The cloud as a concept isn't bad -- some implementations of it are.
- FoeNyx 10y ago
  Also obligatory xkcd : https://www.xkcd.com/743/ https://www.xkcd.com/743/ > If you think he's crazy about a topic just wait 5 years, you'll admit he's right. 2012 → 2017 : yep after Snowden leaks in 2013 that confirmed Microsoft joined PRISM in 2007, the fear of eavesdropping in Skype does not seem unfunded anymore.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
chx 10y ago
While his technical accomplishments are certainly commendable, he is a first rate asshole, see why Libreboot left GNU and also his conference rider. https://github.com/ddol/rre-rms/blob/master/rider.txt https://github.com/ddol/rre-rms/blob/master/rider.txt
- alkonaut 10y ago
  > While his technical accomplishments are certainly commendable, he is a first rate asshole this must be why GNU/Linux is a perfect match. Have those guys actually met or do their egos not fit inside one room?
  - chx 10y ago
    I wouldn't want to be the guy who arranges a Torvalds-Stallman meeting. These two are quite passionate and disagree about something that Stallman spent his life preaching. It wouldn't go well.
    - cryo 10y ago
      They've met in 1999! Torvalds plays with his children while RMS is busy being RMS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDxMJQLXmBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDxMJQLXmBE
- jen729w 10y ago
  While I don't disagree that he sounds, in general, like a bit of a douche, you can hardly say that this rider makes him an asshole. He lays out, reasonably, the conditions under which he will speak. He asks for tea, and Pepsi, not Coke. Seems utterly reasonable to me.
  - briandear 10y ago
    So if Coca Cola is the only thing available, he will just refuse. I personally prefer Coke, but I'm not going to walk off stage if I am offered Pepsi. A bit rock-starish if you ask me.
_ak 10y ago
He's a software Luddite, he basically wants all computing to be like in the 70's, when he enjoyed hacking on ITS, and people would just share software freely. Everything beyond that is evil to him.

I am not sure who this guy is, but he seems a little out of this world.

by roesel 10y ago

I am not sure who this guy is, but he seems a little out of this world.

elchief 10y ago

have you heard of GNU?

tluyben2 10y ago

He is quite famous in software circles [0]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman

joe563323 10y ago

RMS is a legend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman. Every one would be living in a little bit of a different world and all the computer tech guys would be living in a completely different world with out RMS.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
lightedman 10y ago
"Every one would be living in a little bit of a different world and all the computer tech guys would be living in a completely different world with out RMS." Someone else would've likely done the same thing sooner or later.
- astrodust 10y ago
  Free software was not necessarily an inevitability, but efforts to accelerate that certainly pushed it forward. The problem now is this rampant hostility towards all proprietary software of any form for any purpose. The FSF is still fighting the same pointless war against proprietary operating systems when the real threat is IoT junk, cars, and medical devices full of unauditable code.
- arrakeen 10y ago
  free software and the web both happened at the right place and the right time. do you really think the web would be what it is today if you needed to buy a $10k webserver from IBM to host a site? sure, someone else would likely have eventually come up with the concept of free software, but would it have missed the critical mass of the early web? the idea that free software didn't play a large part in the modern technology landscape is just wrong.
  - lightedman 10y ago
    "but would it have missed the critical mass of the early web" You should probably hold a slightly lower opinion of your fellow human. We're rather well-known to go after any possibility of free things, and critical mass was more along the lines of the days of Napster (when, hey, FREE MUSIC!)

orblivion 10y ago

He serves an important purpose. He lays forth a philosophical framework for software freedom, and makes predictions that people don't take seriously and gives advice that nobody would ever practically follow. He also has this annoying habit of being right in the end. He represents an ideal we'll never reach, but we should always aim back toward.

ploggingdev 10y ago
> He also has this annoying habit of being right in the end I'm not familiar with his predictions, so can you give a few examples.
- danieldk 10y ago
  https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html This seemed like a far-fetched dystopia when I first read it. Now, Kindle et al. are not far away from this. I also remember reading some piece from Stallman on software patents, from the eighties or early nineties. Well before software patent trolls, etc.
  - vic-traill 10y ago
    This. Very much echoes my thoughts when I first read Right to Read, which I believe was at a job I left early 2000, so sometime before that. And then the scenario stated becoming, if not true, the a helluva lot closer. And the irony of Orwell books being removed remotely from Kindle's in 2009 [0] was evident and tied into the dystopia feel of it all. [0] http://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html?_r=0&referer= http://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18...
  - blakeyrat 10y ago
    The first patent troll was around in 1879: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/11/05/the-original-patent-troll.aspx http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/11/05/the-origina... Yeah, it wasn't a software patent, but. It's not hard to see something that's happened before and "predict" it could happen again.

ChrisNorstrom 10y ago

Stallman warned people in detail about the dangers of putting everything in "the cloud" years and years before everyone started putting their photos in the cloud, getting hacked, and celebrities' nude photos being leaked on the internet. If you think he's crazy about a topic just wait 5 years, you'll admit he's right.

briandear 10y ago
We could make the same argument against cars and airplanes. Before those were invented exactly zero people died in auto or airplane accidents. The cloud as a concept isn't bad -- some implementations of it are.
FoeNyx 10y ago
Also obligatory xkcd : https://www.xkcd.com/743/ https://www.xkcd.com/743/ > If you think he's crazy about a topic just wait 5 years, you'll admit he's right. 2012 → 2017 : yep after Snowden leaks in 2013 that confirmed Microsoft joined PRISM in 2007, the fear of eavesdropping in Skype does not seem unfunded anymore.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

chx 10y ago

While his technical accomplishments are certainly commendable, he is a first rate asshole, see why Libreboot left GNU and also his conference rider. https://github.com/ddol/rre-rms/blob/master/rider.txt https://github.com/ddol/rre-rms/blob/master/rider.txt

alkonaut 10y ago
> While his technical accomplishments are certainly commendable, he is a first rate asshole this must be why GNU/Linux is a perfect match. Have those guys actually met or do their egos not fit inside one room?
- chx 10y ago
  I wouldn't want to be the guy who arranges a Torvalds-Stallman meeting. These two are quite passionate and disagree about something that Stallman spent his life preaching. It wouldn't go well.
  - cryo 10y ago
    They've met in 1999! Torvalds plays with his children while RMS is busy being RMS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDxMJQLXmBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDxMJQLXmBE
jen729w 10y ago
While I don't disagree that he sounds, in general, like a bit of a douche, you can hardly say that this rider makes him an asshole. He lays out, reasonably, the conditions under which he will speak. He asks for tea, and Pepsi, not Coke. Seems utterly reasonable to me.
- briandear 10y ago
  So if Coca Cola is the only thing available, he will just refuse. I personally prefer Coke, but I'm not going to walk off stage if I am offered Pepsi. A bit rock-starish if you ask me.

_ak 10y ago

He's a software Luddite, he basically wants all computing to be like in the 70's, when he enjoyed hacking on ITS, and people would just share software freely. Everything beyond that is evil to him.