21 ms·

Excerpts from Richard Stallman's talk in Mandya, India

123 points by nfrankel 7y ago

ggm 7y ago
It's nice to read a write-up on RMS which doesn't editorialise what Stallman says, but just reports it polemicists often get criticised on interpretations not on their actual words.
- charliebrownau 7y ago
  So ACTUAL JOURNALISM , not LEFT WING ACTIVISM
jammygit 7y ago
There needs to be a sustainable free software business model that small and large companies can easily adopt. Donations aren't enough. Support based models like RedHat lead to bad incentives and seems to limit one to enterprise clients. Its an option however, but then you're not directly selling your software either, but rather running a side gig alongside development. Most other models that I see working involve saas / hosting, which is a good compromise but also weird: the creator earns nothing if you benefit from the license and use it to host your own instance, which is unfortunate and yet amazing for the end users. There is also the industry association model like Linux uses, which has merit: various stakeholders buy an interest in a project to fund open development. This isn't feasible for the average entrepreneur though, although the creator of Vue apparently has some respectable funding. The creators of something so great for end users should be able to get rich for doing so, rather than needing to make personal financial sacrifices to dedicate their time to the work. It should be more win win.
- AndrewKemendo 7y ago
  There needs to be a sustainable free software business model that small and large companies can easily adopt. I'm unaware of any economic model that allows a product or service to cost 0 but simultaneously net the producer > 0.
  - hellcow 7y ago
    Free in this context means "free as in speech, not as in beer."
    - hopler 7y ago
      Free speech implies you can't force it to be not free as in beer. Being allowed to charge money for something doesn't prevent other people for giving it away free.
      - rlayton2 7y ago
        True, but there are a large number of people for whom just running "make" at the command line is too much of a hassle. This is normally the market, not other technical people.
        wmf 7y ago
        This really doesn't work and it's a disservice to mention it. Every time someone has tried to withhold binaries other people step up within hours to provide them (whether that's a good thing or not).
        rlayton2 7y ago
        Thats not what I meant. I was more considering "help those people" than "take advantage of them and lock them in"
    - charliebrownau 7y ago
      What Country has free speech anymore ? Not Australia Not Canada Not UK Not NZ Definally not at ANY western univierties campus Definally not on any WOKE LEFT WING platforms online Heck people in AU+NZ are getting arrested for "offended" speech Yet Ive never seen real solutions from RS , EFF or others in the free software community's to address this The EFF and RS seem to be about their own socialist dream world that people code for free , world is anti capitalistic and they offer no viable way for companies to make money from software
- caniszczyk 7y ago
  I wrote about this recently: https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/03/25/troubles-with-the-open-source-gig-economy-and-sustainability-tip-jar/ https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/03/25/troubles-with-the-open-... There are plenty of business models out there that maintainers can make money with, in a capitalistic society, this usually involves creating your own business or working for company that uses the software. If no one is paying for your open source project, is it because you don't know how to build an actual product on top of it or is the market maybe telling you something?
  - hopler 7y ago
    Lots of gratis open source products are widely used. Sometimes because inventors are not salespeople. Sometimes because the target market has little money. I'm sure there are many other reasons too. The market is not identical to the civilization
- GuiA 7y ago
  This is one of many cases that UBI could “solve”. If you can house and feed your family, don’t have to worry about healthcare/education costs, etc, you are freed to work on projects like that (either on your own, or associating with others) that benefit society as a whole but are not neatly solved by “the free market”.
  - monort 7y ago
    I don't think so, most programmers can pull UBI-like amount working 1-2 months per year and spend the rest time on the project of their own, but I don't know a lot of programmers who live like that.
    - rhn_mk1 7y ago
      I would blame that on the current economy, where getting contract work is already work in itself, and the fact that insurance and other taxes need to be paid all year round. I guess that having 1-2 months clocked in per year won't instill confidence in potential customers either.
      - pzone 7y ago
        How would UBI solve the coordination, incentive and information problems that make temporary contract work difficult to arrange? It's a pain in the ass to find someone good and get them up to speed and most projects last longer than 1-2 months. UBI doesn't change those facts whatsoever.
        rhn_mk1 7y ago
        It wouldn't solve those problems, but sidestep them completely. UBI frees you up from the overhead of getting money and leaves time to pursue the projects that the thread's ancestor mentioned, without having to worry about sustenance.
- mikekchar 7y ago
  > but then you're not directly selling your software either You can't usually sell FOSS because any of your downstream customers can undercut you. Since they may be doing less development than you (to the point of doing nothing), any business model around FOSS that relies on directly selling your software is risky. I suppose it can work, but it requires all of your downstream customers to be working in concert with you, which is very unlikely long term (and especially unlikely if you start making a lot of money). You can try to offer SaaS services on top of your FOSS software, but that will also be undercut if you are reasonably successful. This gives you a couple of options. First, you can try to eke a living out of selling software/SaaS but making little enough money that you don't attract attention from competition. This is not necessarily unreasonable if you are trying to make a living wage. People are unlikely to compete with you if the pool is only $100K a year. But in reality, the only actual scarcity that you have to offer is your time. Very rarely do you see someone fork a project, do a huge amount of development work and offer up the result. People/organisations trying to cash in on your work will be trying to avoid doing development. Otherwise they will almost certainly prefer to look at your effort and rewrite it from scratch. This means you have to charge for development work. There are only really 2 ways of doing this: find contract work for your project (up to and including sponsoring development entirely), or asking for willing support of development (aka "donations"). I think it's incorrect that donations aren't enough. It's fair enough to say that they generally haven't been enough, but I think part of the problem is the idea that a "donation" is optional. Especially for business software/services, one thing I've heard over and over again is: "We would pay for this, but there is no way to get an invoice". IMHO, this is actually the problem. It's not that there is a shortage of people willing to pay, it's more that there is a difficulty making the payment happen. Even non-corporate end users are willing to pay for software and support development (what percentage of people would hold up their hand and say they wouldn't pay for the tools they use every day). It's more that they don't pay (strangely, quite a few free software game developers have discovered that putting their game on Steam results in money appearing, simply because it is a convenient method for people to pay). I think part of the problem with current FOSS business models is that they are predicated on the idea that people won't pay unless forced to rather than the idea that people will pay, but don't because there is too much friction in the payment area (psychological as well as actual). Fix the payment issue and I think you will find that you have a viable business model which is robust because anyone wanting to challenge you has to produce better than you, rather than just ride your coat tails. One small thing I would also advise: don't overlook trademarks! There is a very good reason why the GPL does not include a trademark license. Do not hand out your trademark to your downstream customers and allow them to piggyback on your success. Force them to build their own brand if they want to market software/services using your code.
- wmf 7y ago
  BTW the foundations generally explicitly do not fund development; they're more for marketing. (I know LF employs Linus and Greg KH and such but that's like 1% of Linux development.)
- stephenr 7y ago
  Complaining about a lack of business involvement in RMS-approved “free software” is like complaining about sugar in Cadbury’s products. Plenty of companies create, use and release open source software using permissive open source licenses. When the licence itself and the mantra that goes with it are both hostile to business use, it’s no surprise business doesn’t get involved.
  - door5 7y ago
    >When the licence itself and the mantra that goes with it are both hostile to business use, it’s no surprise business doesn’t get involved. Obviously, but that's because businesses act unethically -- ie, for private profit over public good. They absolutely should be called out for that. Or, more specifically, they should be regulated so that non-free software licenses are illegal or severely restricted.
    - stephenr 7y ago
      > Obviously, but that's because businesses act unethically This is like saying women shouldn’t wear short skirts because men can’t be trusted not to rape them. It’s ridiculous and insulting to people that run businesses that do act ethically and do engage with open source in a positive manner. You’re judging all business as unethical, before they have a chance to do anything, and against the evidence of companies that use permissively licensed software in a positive way. Attitudes like this are why people don’t like the GPL and it’s proponents. Edit: holy ironic shit, I just noticed the last sentence you wrote: > so that non-free software licenses are illegal or severely restricted. This is fucking insane. It’s a terrible suggestion and needs to be recognised as such. Edit: terrible ideas are terrible.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        > businesses act unethically Perhaps the more charitable reading of this is that some businesses act unethically, and they should be called out for doing so?
        7y ago
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- the_why_of_y 7y ago
  What bad incentives do support based models lead to? There are 3 different aspects here: 1. you're selling support 2. the customer is using the support 3. it's open source, so anybody can sell support So in order to be profitable, you want to maximize your income (1.) and minimize your expenses (2.), that is, sell lots of support for software whose quality is good enough that the customers rarely have to actually call the support hotline. But if the customer does call the support hotline you have to ensure that the support they get is top quality, otherwise they'll take advantage of 3. and leave for your competitor (note, "we'll support ourselves in-house based on the upstream release" is effectively another competitor here). Another point: there are multiple levels of support, and different organizations can cooperate to provide the full package; at the lowest level you tell the end user to check if the computer is powered on; at the higher levels you root-cause and fix bugs and implement new features, which is where you can really market expertise with specific projects. Of course you're right to point out that you're limited to enterprise clients; I haven't heard of any success with selling support to consumers.
  - bubblethink 7y ago
    >What bad incentives do support based models lead to? Entirely useless projects that would not stand independent scrutiny, but are sold through several inefficient management layers by salesmen with the guarantee that "at least we support it".
  - jammygit 7y ago
    Out of curiosity, how big was your organization before the support model you're describing took off? What sort of product was it? I would love to learn more about how this works in practice for companies besides red hat
- natmaka 7y ago
  If one can devise a set of tests exhibiting that a particular instance works correctly, then a subscription becomes possible, as in "the customer pays a rent, as long as the software works as specified", maybe even along with some provision for penalties. In a way that's what xaaS offers. However devising a way to let the customer keep his data on-premises may be a major factor, as some (many?) consider their data confidential and therefore prefer store it on their own controlled environments. As any serving software needs an adequate underlying machine and OS, the service company needs subcontracting partners and/or ways to certify. It seems to me that Red Hat (along with SUSE, and many other similar companies) may one day adopt this approach.
- Y_Y 7y ago
  > "creators ... should be able to get rich" Personally I don't think economic systems are necessarily better for the creation of rich people. I know it's a minority opinion, but I feel like it leads to lottery type winner-take-all situations where a few popular creators have absurd amounts of money, and the long tail don't have enough to get by. If you had commie programmers all paid a similar fair wage from the government you could generate plenty of good free software and reward effort rather than some mix of luck and skill.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    My experience with people suggests that would tend to reward attendance almost as much as effort.
  - LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
    The sad thing is that often, talent is wasted by people getting rich. Beeing rich is basically like a gymn member ship. Its allbout lifting, gaining (monetary) weight and not really contributing to society anymore. My trillionair-ceps is at 2.8- where is yours now bro? All those people started with some other skill, be it at organizing or detecting opportunitys, or even technical- and its now sits barren.
hopler 7y ago
> I refuse to carry a portable phone. I never have one and unless things change, I never will. I do use portable phones, lots of different ones. If I needed to call someone right now, I would ask one of you, “Could you please make a call for me?” I don't understand how RMS can find this behavior of his non-noteworthy. He claims to boycott things but admits to having a critical reliance on other people not boycotting. For someone deeply committed to extend ideals, the moral flexibility here is huge. It'd be one thing if he advocate a network of swapping burner phones or something, but he's acting like an antivaxxer relying on the herd to indulge and accommodate his desire to get the benefits without paying the costs.
- endemic 7y ago
  This bothered me as well. Not carrying a mobile phone works for him, but if everyone did the same then obviously that strategy collapses. Unless he's advocating that no one carries a mobile phone, which actually seems reasonable in some respects.
  - RandomBacon 7y ago
    ...or everyone would just use payphones/landlines like they did before cellphones became ubiquitous.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - LeoPanthera 7y ago
    > Unless he's advocating that no one carries a mobile phone I'm pretty sure he is advocating that, "unless things change". If even a significant minority fraction of the population stopped carrying cellphones, society and industry would have to work around that problem. After all, we all seemed to get along mostly fine before they existed.
    - ThatGeoGuy 7y ago
mark_l_watson 7y ago
He brings up an interesting problem for smartphone (or any cellphone) use. I know I will never see this as an available product but I would like: something like my Apple Watch that had a simple hardware switch that would turn off cell and GPS connectivity. Then I could occasionally check my messages or missed calls but most of the time have communications turned off. Note that the Apple Watch has an "airplane mode" that turns off cell connections (I think) but not sure about GPS. I have read about Linux cellphones that do have hardware cutoff switches so that would be a good way to remain private most of the time. EDIT: it looks like going to airplane mode also disables GPS: "when the user activates airplane mode, they will disable Bluetooth, GPS, phone calls, and Wi-Fi" nice!! EDIT 2: starting with iOS 10, GPS reception stays on in airplane mode
- paavoova 7y ago
  You can do this by putting a phone in a faraday cage. A quick search shows various wallet-sized poaches available, but I can't vouch for their effectiveness. I wonder why they're not more popular, nor even mentioned, among all the talk of "hardware switches".
  - gboudrias 7y ago
    Not a radio engineer, but it's the shape of the Faraday cage that matters I think, not the size. The required shape most likely depends on the wavelength, as the idea is to distort the waves... Basically if your grid is too tight (ie a sheet of metal) the waves keep their shape, but if the grid is too loose, the waves just pass right through. That's what I've been told by fellow meshnet hobbyists anyhow ;)
  - jazzyjackson 7y ago
    I have read that if its not in airplane mode, a phone will consume more power trying to establish a connection than a phone that has good signal. Having a hardware switch is also just more of a usability thing, make it a simple choice to turn off the radios/notifications, don't make me go into settings to have some peace and quiet...
- jfoster 7y ago
TheLuddite 7y ago
Stallman is a nutter, he should be hospitalized for this own good.
rajekas 7y ago
In a strange coincidence, I was flying back from Bangalore in late Jan and the long curly haired person in the Emirates check-in line looked awfully like Richard Stallman. That's because it was Richard Stallman and in good Indian fashion, he was bring dropped off by someone who clearly adored him. I can't say I reach that level of admiration, but it's good there are people like him in the world.

123 points by nfrankel 7y ago

ggm 7y ago

It's nice to read a write-up on RMS which doesn't editorialise what Stallman says, but just reports it polemicists often get criticised on interpretations not on their actual words.

charliebrownau 7y ago
So ACTUAL JOURNALISM , not LEFT WING ACTIVISM

jammygit 7y ago

There needs to be a sustainable free software business model that small and large companies can easily adopt. Donations aren't enough. Support based models like RedHat lead to bad incentives and seems to limit one to enterprise clients. Its an option however, but then you're not directly selling your software either, but rather running a side gig alongside development. Most other models that I see working involve saas / hosting, which is a good compromise but also weird: the creator earns nothing if you benefit from the license and use it to host your own instance, which is unfortunate and yet amazing for the end users. There is also the industry association model like Linux uses, which has merit: various stakeholders buy an interest in a project to fund open development. This isn't feasible for the average entrepreneur though, although the creator of Vue apparently has some respectable funding. The creators of something so great for end users should be able to get rich for doing so, rather than needing to make personal financial sacrifices to dedicate their time to the work. It should be more win win.

AndrewKemendo 7y ago
There needs to be a sustainable free software business model that small and large companies can easily adopt. I'm unaware of any economic model that allows a product or service to cost 0 but simultaneously net the producer > 0.
- hellcow 7y ago
  Free in this context means "free as in speech, not as in beer."
  - hopler 7y ago
    Free speech implies you can't force it to be not free as in beer. Being allowed to charge money for something doesn't prevent other people for giving it away free.
    - rlayton2 7y ago
      True, but there are a large number of people for whom just running "make" at the command line is too much of a hassle. This is normally the market, not other technical people.
      - wmf 7y ago
        This really doesn't work and it's a disservice to mention it. Every time someone has tried to withhold binaries other people step up within hours to provide them (whether that's a good thing or not).
        rlayton2 7y ago
        Thats not what I meant. I was more considering "help those people" than "take advantage of them and lock them in"
  - charliebrownau 7y ago
    What Country has free speech anymore ? Not Australia Not Canada Not UK Not NZ Definally not at ANY western univierties campus Definally not on any WOKE LEFT WING platforms online Heck people in AU+NZ are getting arrested for "offended" speech Yet Ive never seen real solutions from RS , EFF or others in the free software community's to address this The EFF and RS seem to be about their own socialist dream world that people code for free , world is anti capitalistic and they offer no viable way for companies to make money from software
caniszczyk 7y ago
I wrote about this recently: https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/03/25/troubles-with-the-open-source-gig-economy-and-sustainability-tip-jar/ https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/03/25/troubles-with-the-open-... There are plenty of business models out there that maintainers can make money with, in a capitalistic society, this usually involves creating your own business or working for company that uses the software. If no one is paying for your open source project, is it because you don't know how to build an actual product on top of it or is the market maybe telling you something?
- hopler 7y ago
  Lots of gratis open source products are widely used. Sometimes because inventors are not salespeople. Sometimes because the target market has little money. I'm sure there are many other reasons too. The market is not identical to the civilization
GuiA 7y ago
This is one of many cases that UBI could “solve”. If you can house and feed your family, don’t have to worry about healthcare/education costs, etc, you are freed to work on projects like that (either on your own, or associating with others) that benefit society as a whole but are not neatly solved by “the free market”.
- monort 7y ago
  I don't think so, most programmers can pull UBI-like amount working 1-2 months per year and spend the rest time on the project of their own, but I don't know a lot of programmers who live like that.
  - rhn_mk1 7y ago
    I would blame that on the current economy, where getting contract work is already work in itself, and the fact that insurance and other taxes need to be paid all year round. I guess that having 1-2 months clocked in per year won't instill confidence in potential customers either.
    - pzone 7y ago
      How would UBI solve the coordination, incentive and information problems that make temporary contract work difficult to arrange? It's a pain in the ass to find someone good and get them up to speed and most projects last longer than 1-2 months. UBI doesn't change those facts whatsoever.
      - rhn_mk1 7y ago
        It wouldn't solve those problems, but sidestep them completely. UBI frees you up from the overhead of getting money and leaves time to pursue the projects that the thread's ancestor mentioned, without having to worry about sustenance.
mikekchar 7y ago
> but then you're not directly selling your software either You can't usually sell FOSS because any of your downstream customers can undercut you. Since they may be doing less development than you (to the point of doing nothing), any business model around FOSS that relies on directly selling your software is risky. I suppose it can work, but it requires all of your downstream customers to be working in concert with you, which is very unlikely long term (and especially unlikely if you start making a lot of money). You can try to offer SaaS services on top of your FOSS software, but that will also be undercut if you are reasonably successful. This gives you a couple of options. First, you can try to eke a living out of selling software/SaaS but making little enough money that you don't attract attention from competition. This is not necessarily unreasonable if you are trying to make a living wage. People are unlikely to compete with you if the pool is only $100K a year. But in reality, the only actual scarcity that you have to offer is your time. Very rarely do you see someone fork a project, do a huge amount of development work and offer up the result. People/organisations trying to cash in on your work will be trying to avoid doing development. Otherwise they will almost certainly prefer to look at your effort and rewrite it from scratch. This means you have to charge for development work. There are only really 2 ways of doing this: find contract work for your project (up to and including sponsoring development entirely), or asking for willing support of development (aka "donations"). I think it's incorrect that donations aren't enough. It's fair enough to say that they generally haven't been enough, but I think part of the problem is the idea that a "donation" is optional. Especially for business software/services, one thing I've heard over and over again is: "We would pay for this, but there is no way to get an invoice". IMHO, this is actually the problem. It's not that there is a shortage of people willing to pay, it's more that there is a difficulty making the payment happen. Even non-corporate end users are willing to pay for software and support development (what percentage of people would hold up their hand and say they wouldn't pay for the tools they use every day). It's more that they don't pay (strangely, quite a few free software game developers have discovered that putting their game on Steam results in money appearing, simply because it is a convenient method for people to pay). I think part of the problem with current FOSS business models is that they are predicated on the idea that people won't pay unless forced to rather than the idea that people will pay, but don't because there is too much friction in the payment area (psychological as well as actual). Fix the payment issue and I think you will find that you have a viable business model which is robust because anyone wanting to challenge you has to produce better than you, rather than just ride your coat tails. One small thing I would also advise: don't overlook trademarks! There is a very good reason why the GPL does not include a trademark license. Do not hand out your trademark to your downstream customers and allow them to piggyback on your success. Force them to build their own brand if they want to market software/services using your code.
wmf 7y ago
BTW the foundations generally explicitly do not fund development; they're more for marketing. (I know LF employs Linus and Greg KH and such but that's like 1% of Linux development.)
stephenr 7y ago
Complaining about a lack of business involvement in RMS-approved “free software” is like complaining about sugar in Cadbury’s products. Plenty of companies create, use and release open source software using permissive open source licenses. When the licence itself and the mantra that goes with it are both hostile to business use, it’s no surprise business doesn’t get involved.
- door5 7y ago
  >When the licence itself and the mantra that goes with it are both hostile to business use, it’s no surprise business doesn’t get involved. Obviously, but that's because businesses act unethically -- ie, for private profit over public good. They absolutely should be called out for that. Or, more specifically, they should be regulated so that non-free software licenses are illegal or severely restricted.
  - stephenr 7y ago
    > Obviously, but that's because businesses act unethically This is like saying women shouldn’t wear short skirts because men can’t be trusted not to rape them. It’s ridiculous and insulting to people that run businesses that do act ethically and do engage with open source in a positive manner. You’re judging all business as unethical, before they have a chance to do anything, and against the evidence of companies that use permissively licensed software in a positive way. Attitudes like this are why people don’t like the GPL and it’s proponents. Edit: holy ironic shit, I just noticed the last sentence you wrote: > so that non-free software licenses are illegal or severely restricted. This is fucking insane. It’s a terrible suggestion and needs to be recognised as such. Edit: terrible ideas are terrible.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      > businesses act unethically Perhaps the more charitable reading of this is that some businesses act unethically, and they should be called out for doing so?
      - 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
the_why_of_y 7y ago
What bad incentives do support based models lead to? There are 3 different aspects here: 1. you're selling support 2. the customer is using the support 3. it's open source, so anybody can sell support So in order to be profitable, you want to maximize your income (1.) and minimize your expenses (2.), that is, sell lots of support for software whose quality is good enough that the customers rarely have to actually call the support hotline. But if the customer does call the support hotline you have to ensure that the support they get is top quality, otherwise they'll take advantage of 3. and leave for your competitor (note, "we'll support ourselves in-house based on the upstream release" is effectively another competitor here). Another point: there are multiple levels of support, and different organizations can cooperate to provide the full package; at the lowest level you tell the end user to check if the computer is powered on; at the higher levels you root-cause and fix bugs and implement new features, which is where you can really market expertise with specific projects. Of course you're right to point out that you're limited to enterprise clients; I haven't heard of any success with selling support to consumers.
- bubblethink 7y ago
  >What bad incentives do support based models lead to? Entirely useless projects that would not stand independent scrutiny, but are sold through several inefficient management layers by salesmen with the guarantee that "at least we support it".
- jammygit 7y ago
  Out of curiosity, how big was your organization before the support model you're describing took off? What sort of product was it? I would love to learn more about how this works in practice for companies besides red hat
natmaka 7y ago
If one can devise a set of tests exhibiting that a particular instance works correctly, then a subscription becomes possible, as in "the customer pays a rent, as long as the software works as specified", maybe even along with some provision for penalties. In a way that's what xaaS offers. However devising a way to let the customer keep his data on-premises may be a major factor, as some (many?) consider their data confidential and therefore prefer store it on their own controlled environments. As any serving software needs an adequate underlying machine and OS, the service company needs subcontracting partners and/or ways to certify. It seems to me that Red Hat (along with SUSE, and many other similar companies) may one day adopt this approach.
Y_Y 7y ago
> "creators ... should be able to get rich" Personally I don't think economic systems are necessarily better for the creation of rich people. I know it's a minority opinion, but I feel like it leads to lottery type winner-take-all situations where a few popular creators have absurd amounts of money, and the long tail don't have enough to get by. If you had commie programmers all paid a similar fair wage from the government you could generate plenty of good free software and reward effort rather than some mix of luck and skill.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  My experience with people suggests that would tend to reward attendance almost as much as effort.
- LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
  The sad thing is that often, talent is wasted by people getting rich. Beeing rich is basically like a gymn member ship. Its allbout lifting, gaining (monetary) weight and not really contributing to society anymore. My trillionair-ceps is at 2.8- where is yours now bro? All those people started with some other skill, be it at organizing or detecting opportunitys, or even technical- and its now sits barren.

hopler 7y ago

> I refuse to carry a portable phone. I never have one and unless things change, I never will. I do use portable phones, lots of different ones. If I needed to call someone right now, I would ask one of you, “Could you please make a call for me?” I don't understand how RMS can find this behavior of his non-noteworthy. He claims to boycott things but admits to having a critical reliance on other people not boycotting. For someone deeply committed to extend ideals, the moral flexibility here is huge. It'd be one thing if he advocate a network of swapping burner phones or something, but he's acting like an antivaxxer relying on the herd to indulge and accommodate his desire to get the benefits without paying the costs.

endemic 7y ago
This bothered me as well. Not carrying a mobile phone works for him, but if everyone did the same then obviously that strategy collapses. Unless he's advocating that no one carries a mobile phone, which actually seems reasonable in some respects.
- RandomBacon 7y ago
  ...or everyone would just use payphones/landlines like they did before cellphones became ubiquitous.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- LeoPanthera 7y ago
  > Unless he's advocating that no one carries a mobile phone I'm pretty sure he is advocating that, "unless things change". If even a significant minority fraction of the population stopped carrying cellphones, society and industry would have to work around that problem. After all, we all seemed to get along mostly fine before they existed.
  - ThatGeoGuy 7y ago

mark_l_watson 7y ago

He brings up an interesting problem for smartphone (or any cellphone) use. I know I will never see this as an available product but I would like: something like my Apple Watch that had a simple hardware switch that would turn off cell and GPS connectivity. Then I could occasionally check my messages or missed calls but most of the time have communications turned off. Note that the Apple Watch has an "airplane mode" that turns off cell connections (I think) but not sure about GPS. I have read about Linux cellphones that do have hardware cutoff switches so that would be a good way to remain private most of the time. EDIT: it looks like going to airplane mode also disables GPS: "when the user activates airplane mode, they will disable Bluetooth, GPS, phone calls, and Wi-Fi" nice!! EDIT 2: starting with iOS 10, GPS reception stays on in airplane mode

paavoova 7y ago
You can do this by putting a phone in a faraday cage. A quick search shows various wallet-sized poaches available, but I can't vouch for their effectiveness. I wonder why they're not more popular, nor even mentioned, among all the talk of "hardware switches".
- gboudrias 7y ago
  Not a radio engineer, but it's the shape of the Faraday cage that matters I think, not the size. The required shape most likely depends on the wavelength, as the idea is to distort the waves... Basically if your grid is too tight (ie a sheet of metal) the waves keep their shape, but if the grid is too loose, the waves just pass right through. That's what I've been told by fellow meshnet hobbyists anyhow ;)
- jazzyjackson 7y ago
  I have read that if its not in airplane mode, a phone will consume more power trying to establish a connection than a phone that has good signal. Having a hardware switch is also just more of a usability thing, make it a simple choice to turn off the radios/notifications, don't make me go into settings to have some peace and quiet...
jfoster 7y ago

TheLuddite 7y ago

Stallman is a nutter, he should be hospitalized for this own good.

rajekas 7y ago

In a strange coincidence, I was flying back from Bangalore in late Jan and the long curly haired person in the Emirates check-in line looked awfully like Richard Stallman. That's because it was Richard Stallman and in good Indian fashion, he was bring dropped off by someone who clearly adored him. I can't say I reach that level of admiration, but it's good there are people like him in the world.