4 ms·

I'm a right-wing libertarian, and I've never felt excluded or anything like that because of his leftist views. This for many reasons: 1) He's not a hypocrite i

I'm a right-wing libertarian, and I've never felt excluded or anything like that because of his leftist views. This for many reasons: 1) He's not a hypocrite in any way. He's honest and you can tell that he has truly thought about his opinions. 2) In my country, I get bombarded with a ralentless stream of leftist ideology. The worst kind of leftism: the lazy 'slogan' leftism, from people too stupid to realize the full implications of their discourse. In comparison to them, Stallman is a moderate, thoughtful, sweet person. 3) I see his leftism as orthogonal to his software freedom ideology. I use and support free software, and I'm more pro-capitalism than Milton Friedman.

AmericanChopper 7y ago
I don’t care about his views on those kind of politics at all. But when it comes to free software he is an ideological maximalist. Take a look at how he uses computers personally, his values (at least currently) don’t fit in with most users expectations of what personal computing should be. His contributions aren’t in question, and his voice is a valuable one to have in the choir, but he’s not a person willing to accept a middle ground, and as such the RMS way of doing things is never going to be widely accepted.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  From my perspective, The RMS Way and Libertarianism have this in common: They aren't meant to be widely adopted, but mean, rather, as a critique of the status quo.
- sifar 7y ago
  >> but he’s not a person willing to accept a middle ground You need somebody as guideposts to stand at the extreme ends. I am glad RMS stands at his end.
thrwayxyz 7y ago
To go to the nuclear option Stallman is pro voluntary pedophilia. This puts him so outside the mainstream of opinion that he might as well be shoving Jews into ovens himself. The honesty is extremely refreshing for a small subset of people who will be fanatically loyal to him. These people will also be some of the most talented and difficult to work with, much like Stallman himself. In my circle of friends technical competency is directly proportional to your agreement with Stallman.
- stuartd 7y ago
  > he might as well be shoving Jews into ovens himself. In what way is this not utterly, appallingly offensive? For shame.
  - thrwayxyz 7y ago
    It was meant to be. Now try and think it trough instead of having knee jerk outrage as your reaction.
dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
> 1) He's not a hypocrite in any way. He's honest and you can tell that he has truly thought about his opinions. I think that's crucial. I remember he was discussing one of the aspects of software freedom with my friend and she said "I don't agree." He answered: "No problem, you have your view, I have mine, we don't have to agree on everything." It struck me as I had expected he'll try to convince and win her over his ideas.
- toyg 7y ago
  RMS has seen (and likely started) more flamewars in his lifetime than most of us ever will. He has clearly developed (or adopted) a meta-system to deal with differing views. If you ever talk to a smart priest, it's the same playbook: when it comes to deep beliefs, there is no point hammering something in your face, because it won't stick. Either you get to "truth" out of your own reasoning, or it's not worth it.

AmericanChopper 7y ago

I don’t care about his views on those kind of politics at all. But when it comes to free software he is an ideological maximalist. Take a look at how he uses computers personally, his values (at least currently) don’t fit in with most users expectations of what personal computing should be. His contributions aren’t in question, and his voice is a valuable one to have in the choir, but he’s not a person willing to accept a middle ground, and as such the RMS way of doing things is never going to be widely accepted.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
From my perspective, The RMS Way and Libertarianism have this in common: They aren't meant to be widely adopted, but mean, rather, as a critique of the status quo.
sifar 7y ago
>> but he’s not a person willing to accept a middle ground You need somebody as guideposts to stand at the extreme ends. I am glad RMS stands at his end.

thrwayxyz 7y ago

To go to the nuclear option Stallman is pro voluntary pedophilia. This puts him so outside the mainstream of opinion that he might as well be shoving Jews into ovens himself. The honesty is extremely refreshing for a small subset of people who will be fanatically loyal to him. These people will also be some of the most talented and difficult to work with, much like Stallman himself. In my circle of friends technical competency is directly proportional to your agreement with Stallman.

stuartd 7y ago
> he might as well be shoving Jews into ovens himself. In what way is this not utterly, appallingly offensive? For shame.
- thrwayxyz 7y ago
  It was meant to be. Now try and think it trough instead of having knee jerk outrage as your reaction.

dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago

> 1) He's not a hypocrite in any way. He's honest and you can tell that he has truly thought about his opinions. I think that's crucial. I remember he was discussing one of the aspects of software freedom with my friend and she said "I don't agree." He answered: "No problem, you have your view, I have mine, we don't have to agree on everything." It struck me as I had expected he'll try to convince and win her over his ideas.

toyg 7y ago
RMS has seen (and likely started) more flamewars in his lifetime than most of us ever will. He has clearly developed (or adopted) a meta-system to deal with differing views. If you ever talk to a smart priest, it's the same playbook: when it comes to deep beliefs, there is no point hammering something in your face, because it won't stick. Either you get to "truth" out of your own reasoning, or it's not worth it.