13 ms·

Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

493 points by AlexeyMK 15y ago

rjbond3rd 15y ago
This man is arguably the greatest hacker of all time. He's hacking the culture, he's been incredibly successful. It's shocking and irresponsible that people are commenting on "what rms says" based only on hearsay, speculation and mis-quotes. At least take the time to Google before condemning the man for things he never said.
- AlexeyMK 15y ago
  The link to the video of the lecture was in the first sentence of the letter. Apologies if this was unclear.
  - rjbond3rd 15y ago
    Apologies to you but I was referring to commenters on this thread, not your post. Specifically, the 9/11 stuff. I should have replied to those directly, but was disgusted. My apologies once again because it has nothing to do with you.
st3fan 15y ago
When you talk about the risk of software as a service, you can mention that the US gov't is attempting to collect identifying user data from the Wikileaks Twitter account, or the recent domain name seizures of PokerStars and other online gambling websites. These are practical consequences of a lack of Free Software Huh Wut!? How is free or open software going to prevent any company from receiving a court order to disclose data about its users? This has nothing to do with technical implementation of a service.
- AlexeyMK 15y ago
  Agreed, the point isn't straight-forward. Stallman's argument was against software-as-a-service and in favor of doing computing locally. If we were using a decentralized twitter alternative like identi.ca or status.net, then all of the IP/log data wouldn't be in Twitter's hands to give in the first place. This is the 'if you let other people do your computing for you, you lose control/freedom over your data' argument. The same logic (albeit less convincingly) applies to PokerStars - if we were using some sort of Bitcoin-driven, no-single-point-of-failure architecture for online poker, the US government wouldn't have been able to shut down the operation nearly as easily.
sliverstorm 15y ago
On the flipside, if Stallman was less crazy I wouldn't have my second-favorite comic strip of all time: http://xkcd.com/225/ http://xkcd.com/225/
- patrickaljord 15y ago
  Relevant http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/04/19/life-imitates-xkcd-part-ii-richard-stallman/ http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/04/19/life-imitates-xkcd-part-ii-r...
danieldk 15y ago
Years back, I used to be an FSF member. Not that I liked the GPL much (in fact, I mostly use the Apache License), but they raised important issues, and had a track record of investing into fine software (GNU) that I benefitted from a lot. However, their campaigns were getting so off-target, that much of my sympathy dwindled, and I ended my membership. Childish 'anti' advertising, such as 'BadVista' and DDoSing Apple's genius bars (gee, that's will convince anyone who was visiting an Apple Store) only made the whole free software movement look bad, childish, and unsocial. To this day, they seem to put their energy into almost hilarious campaigns (Windows 7 sins? Seriously?). This open letter is on the mark, their current course only marginalizes the FSF and part of the FLOSS community. Whatever happened to relying on your own strengths, rather than caricaturizing the competition?
- fluidcruft 15y ago
  I am also a lapsed member exactly for the same reasons. The camp makes it impossible to spread the word (for example by linking to their site) because I feel like the cheesiness of the presentation would reflect poorly on me. Frankly they look like a bunch of clowns. Which is unfortunate. I do think they are entitled to their own flair and personality. Thankfully the GPL website is less polarizing. The free software manifesto is great and it isn't packaged in a cloak of easily-dismissed looniness.
- lewispb 15y ago
  Funny you should mention childish: http://www.fsf.org/facebook http://www.fsf.org/facebook
- vog 15y ago
  I'm a happy fellow of the FSFE (http://fsfe.org/ http://fsfe.org/), the European pendant to the FSF. Sometimes we also discuss FSF campaigns, and usually agree that those would almost certainly be counter-productive here in Europe, especially things like the "Windows 7 sins". However, we always thought: Well, the USA have a different culture, so maybe this kind of campaign is needed there, and probably our style of campaign would not work there. (With "our style" I especially mean: not to exaggerate, and to prefer positive campaigns over negative campaigns.) It is interesting to see that our objections seem to be also valid within the USA, too. Maybe it's time for some people to join the FSF and to encourage them to learn from their European branch.
michaelpinto 15y ago
If Stallman wasn't a crazy hippy he wouldn't have been into this cause years before even the first dot.com boom. It's unfair for someone to insist that a visionary go corporate all these years later because you feel uncomfortable. If you want to be the next generation spokesman than become that, but don't waste time trying to make a zebra shed his stripes.
- AlexeyMK 15y ago
  Thanks for making that point. I want to make perfectly clear that I have a tremendous amount of respect for RMS and everything that he's done. By no means would I recommend that he compromise his ideology or 'go corporate.' All I'm saying is: almost everybody at his talk (already a self-selecting group) was put off by the tone and extremist nature of his delivery. His message got lost, and that sucks - it's an important message.
  - patrickaljord 15y ago
    But his eccentricity and radicalism are what made the fsf and gnu possible in the first place. Anyone with his skills in the 70s turned into a millionaire by the end of the 80's. Instead he decided to lock himself up and write emacs, gcc, glibc etc and give them away for free living on donations and minimum wage freelancing. The thing is that you can't call him on his eccentricity and radicalism when this is exactly what got him there in the first place. Sure, he's not business friendly but we already have very powerful entities such as google advocating foss in a business friendly way. I still find his speeches entertaining and things like swindle and digital restrictions don't offend me, they're actually refreshing compared to the usual politically correct speeches.
    - bostonpete 15y ago
      I dunno. Couldn't you use that same sort of logic to argue against criticizing any great/commendable person? We shouldn't criticize them because those character traits are part of the reason they accomplished these other things over here. Then again, maybe the criticism they've received all along has helped to drive them to those successes, so we actually should be criticizing them...
smellyboy 15y ago
Whilst I'm against negative campaigning, rms has been and still is the consciousness of free software. We would be in a very bad place if not for him. yeah sometimes he's a dick, but then we all are.
emilsedgh 15y ago
A few points i would like to remind everyone who criticizes rms. 1) rms is a radical guy. You cannot change that. He fights for what he thinks is right. He is not the kind of person you can ask to censor himself. If he thinks u.s goverment is to blame for 9/11, no matter how saying it in a lecture seems childish, he will say it. If you invite rms for a lecture, he is coming with his radicalism. That is to be expected. You cannot invite rms and expect steve jobs. 2) rms is a practical guy. stop acting like he's a mad man who knows nothing. He started GNU, wrote emacs, glibc, gcc and probably others. He created the concept of free software and wrote a license as good as GPL to defend it. He also managed to gather a community around this very crazy idea of free software. 3) rms doesnt want people only to use free software. he wants people to value their freedom, and as a result of that, use free software. It doesnt really matter if whole world uses android instead of ios. The point is, these days, most people involved in open source community, do not even care about free software and the freedom it offers. Most people are interested in technological advancements or affects of an open source project on market. None of them are concerns for rms. And, what i said above is just what i interpreted from his actions and are not facts.
- patrickaljord 15y ago
  > If he thinks u.s goverment is to blame for 9/11, no matter how saying it in a lecture seems childish, he will say it. By the way he doesn't believe that. Last time I read about his opinion on the subject he said that proofs were lacking on both sides (truther and non-truther) but that it was probably the work of religious fundamentalists (either christians or muslims).
  - mbateman 15y ago
    I'm not sure that agnosticism on this issue is much less crazy, but okay.
  - schrototo 15y ago
    > ... proofs were lacking on both sides ... religious fundamentalists (either christians or muslims). These are equally ridiculous statements. We know who did it, we know how they did it, we know why they did it. People just can't accept that enormous events can have relatively simple causes.
elwin 15y ago
I hear this opinion a lot, and I think it slightly misses the point. The open-source world already has plenty of socially conventional advocates promoting their products. If the FSF became an ordinary open-source software promoter, it wouldn't have nearly as much influence as, say, the Ubuntu marketing team. But there aren't many organizations trying to derive software principles from objective logic instead of subjective cost-benefit analysis, who insist that freedom and controlling your own computing is not just another feature but a vital issue. RMS may not convert many Windows users, but he does come up with valuable insights. If no one else is going to be a vocal, uncompromising advocate for software users, I can cringe through Windows 7 Sins and jokes about letting presidents drown.
Typhon 15y ago
Can somebody tell me when exactly did Stallman say that someone who used proprietary software was a hater of freedom ? In the last interview I read, he seemed able to understand that almost nobody would go as far as him on the side of software freedom. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/031411-richard-stallman.html?page=2 http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/031411-richard-stallma...
- MostAwesomeDude 15y ago
  I have no citation, but he did say things along those lines when I saw him at Portland State not even a month ago.
- MostAwesomeDude 15y ago
  I have no citation, but he did say things along those lines when I saw him at Portland State not even a month ago.
lell 15y ago
Proponents of the FSF desire the hegemony of free software with the same uncompromising fervor as revolutionaries in russia desired communism in 1917. And the analogy does not end there. In many ways, free software is a communists dream. Marx hoped that technology would make human labour redundant through mechanisation of production, allowing humans to spend all their time doing r&d (or r&r) --- he hoped that stuff like food would become free to create. With software, it's already possible to make this a reality, as programs can be replicated without cost. All other things being equal, this should lead to great benefits to society, a prospect that has attracted RMS and others. That being said, it is as useless to ask RMS to compromise as it would be to ask those revolutionaries to in russia, 1917. Furthermore, asking them to take baby steps is condescending, and they will ignore this advice. The reason is that their motivation differs from the majority of the hackernews readership. Sure, if they took baby steps and focused on PR and focused their agenda, free software might become more mainstream, and many entrepreneurs and small companies would benefit. But they don't want entrepreneurs and small companies to benefit, esp. if it means making these compromises. Essentially, this is why I find articles like this condescending. The point of FSF is to improve society by advocating universal adoption of free software. Entrepreneurs indirectly benefit from these endeavors. Entrepreneurs then complain that the FSF could be more effective if they compromised their platforms. But this is sort of disingenuous because it's essentially the entrepreneurs telling the FSF to redirect effort that would benefit all of society to effort that would benefit the entrepreneurs. Granted, the former efforts are harder than the latter, but it is no one's place to tell the FSF how to direct their charity and advocacy, especially not someone who stands to gain from the reallocation that they themselves suggest.
- patrickaljord 15y ago
  > Proponents of the FSF desire the hegemony of free software with the same uncompromising fervor as revolutionaries in russia desired communism in 1917. Sorry but this is not true. Stallman already said many times that he doesn't think proprietary software should be banned. In fact the first version of the emacs license used to oblige people to redistribute their modifications even when there were no re-distribution. RMS realized that was fascist and decided to only ask for source in case of redistribution (as in the gpl later).
Tichy 15y ago
Damn you, Photoshop (presumably the only piece of closed software some people just can't do without).
- hernan7 15y ago
  Lots of proprietary software in the music industry too. Even if you want to create music as a hobby on your computer, things like samples are all in proprietary formats.
  - vog 15y ago
    > things like samples are all in proprietary formats This is not exactly true. There do exist free samples in open formats, for instance the Freepats project: http://freepats.zenvoid.org/ http://freepats.zenvoid.org/
  - ramchip 15y ago
    Count hardware design and embedded systems in as well. Many of us work in a morass of proprietary tools and obfuscated IP cores.
leoc 15y ago
Eben Moglen http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/ http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/ is a more winning spokesman for the FSF these days. I hope he'll forgive me for mentioning that there's plenty of him on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=eben+moglen http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=eben+moglen :)
- hubb 15y ago
  eben's a wonderful speaker, but i believe he's resigned from actively working for the FSF? i could be wrong
  - mvalle 15y ago
    I believe he now works for the Software Freedom Law Center, which is sort of affiliated with the FSF.
  - leoc 15y ago
    His homepage still lists a FSF affilation, and I'm pretty sure he's still serving as the GPLv3's attorney (as 'twere).
mbateman 15y ago
Just a quick thought from skimming this thread: It seems like there are two issues, radicalism and eccentricity. Saying that the government may have caused 9/11 is eccentric. It's crazy and "radical" in an uninteresting way, and most intelligent people will ignore it. But the idea that one shouldn't use Google docs if one values freedom is radical. I think RMS is completely and totally wrong, but the radicalism or apparent impracticality of the idea is not what I object to. The cheesy campaigns and slogans have elements of both. They are radical ideas presented in an eccentric way. I think the 7 sins stuff, Swindle, etc., are stupid and childish and really have no upside. But contrary to what the OP seems to suggest, while many people are turned off by radicalism, radicals are influential way out of proportion to what one would be led to expect by making a quick survey of people's negative reactions to them. It can be hard to separate what's radical and what's merely eccentric. Especially if you're the one trying to figure out how to present radical ideas.
- waterhouse 15y ago
  Yes, I came to the comments intending to say that. I agree with the author that talking about 9/11 that way just makes him look crazy, but he should not in any way cut down on his free software rhetoric because of "practical" considerations. An activist like him is selling two things: his ideas, and a call to action. If he restricted himself to giving "practical" recommendations, he would no longer be selling his ideas; he might get some people to switch to using free software, but they wouldn't be part of the "movement"; they'd switch back to proprietary software as soon as their job or some particular task required it, and then he'd be left with nothing. Whereas if he argues for his ideas, and takes them to their logical conclusion, he will convince a few people (many, if he's lucky) that will likely become members for life (if not necessarily active members) and can build a real community that has a chance of growing and eventually achieving total success. Now, it might help to give people some things they can realistically do right now. But the life of a movement lies in its radical members, and "practicality" should not come at the expense of the promotion of the (radical) ideas. Cf. the abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement.
- pw 15y ago
  > radicals are influential way out of proportion to what one would be led to expect by making a quick survey of people's negative reactions to them. Is radicalism a hack for getting attention? Is RMS's radicalism such a hack? If not, could it have started out as such? Is Swindle, RMS's use of 9/11, et alia a misguided attempt to use this radicalism hack?
jrockway 15y ago
I don't think this guy gets it. Clearly, he has drawn the line at "proprietary software is fine, as long as it's useful to me". To RMS, though, that's not where the line is: he simply refuses to use software he can't tweak or audit. That's not like calling Obama Hitler or saying global warming is a scientific fraud. It's just an ideology, like not driving a car or only eating foods that don't come from animals. Nothing wrong with that, so why all the hate? This article is sillier than calling the kindle "swindle".
- estel 15y ago
  If the spokesperson for the Vegetarian Society was trying to persuade others to become vegetarian by branding all farmers "murderers" and engaging in ridiculous rhetoric, I think other vegetarians might be concerned that their message wasn't being conveyed appropriately and was alienating them from the mainstream, thereby resulting in fewer vegetarians.
  - rdouble 15y ago
    I can't tell if you are being facetious, but the main argument for vegetarianism is that "meat is murder."
    - estel 15y ago
      I guess I meant PETA-levels of extremism. Like this: http://blog.peta.org.uk/2011/01/peta-takes-meat-warning-to-cardiff/ http://blog.peta.org.uk/2011/01/peta-takes-meat-warning-to-c...
    - rosser 15y ago
      For many of the vegetarians I've known, that's a secondary argument, the primary being a healthier lifestyle.
      - rdouble 15y ago
        I know people like that, too. However, if I had to bet money on the primary motivation of the majority of the world's vegetarians, I would bet they hold ethical arguments against eating meat.
pgbovine 15y ago
minor nit: i don't think rms is a "Dr.", since he didn't get a Ph.D. (unless he has a secret M.D.) From wikipedia: "Stallman then enrolled as a graduate student in physics at MIT, but abandoned his graduate studies while remaining a programmer at the MIT AI Laboratory. Stallman abandoned his pursuit of a doctorate in physics in favor of programming." perhaps he has an honorary doctorate?
- roadnottaken 15y ago
  From the same wikipedia article: 1996: Honorary doctorate from Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology [85] 2001: Honorary doctorate, from the University of Glasgow [89] 2003: Honorary doctorate, from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel [91] 2004: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad Nacional de Salta. [92] 2007: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad de Los Angeles de Chimbote. 2007: Honorary doctorate, from the University of Pavia [93] 2008: Honorary doctorate from the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo, in Peru 2009: Honorary doctorate, from Lakehead University [94][95] RTFA :)
  - cgray4 15y ago
    I don't think an honorary doctorate entitles one to be referred to as Dr. In fact, most people with doctorates that I know would rather not be referred to as Dr. In the case of this article, it seems like the author is trying to be overly-formal in the manner of a Keith Olbermann rant.
    - yahelc 15y ago
      Seems like he's referred to frequently as 'Dr. Stallman', including on gnu.org. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22Dr.+Stallman%22+site%3Agnu.org&aq=f&aqi=&aql=f&oq= http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22Dr....
      - cgray4 15y ago
        Yuck.
angus77 15y ago
I pretty much agreed with everything except the ridiculous idea that Stallman should try out Google Docs so he could see how "good" it is.
- jackvalentine 15y ago
  I don't understand your objection. It is an amazingly simple tool for collaborative editing and I don't know of any free software alternatives that are as easily usable.
  - yesbabyyes 15y ago
    Etherpad?
  - angus77 15y ago
    I don't doubt it, but if you think Stallman is interested in a product because it's "better" than another product then you really don't know what Stallman's values are at all. Stallman's not objecting to it on the grounds of it being poor software, nor is he making the claim that it is poor software. If someone's on a diet and refuses to eat chocolate because that would be against the point of the diet, countering with "I think you should try it---it tastes so good" completely misses the point.
    - jackvalentine 15y ago
      To act like free software can entirely ignore what closed-source software does is a bizzare position to take though. Simply the act of using high quality software (closed or open) gives you insight, inspiration and direction for whatever you're working on. I know Stallman isn't interested in products because they're "better". But he should be - even if only to push the free software movement to make itself even better.
andywood 15y ago
I dislike the idea that every single leader in the world must only conduct themselves according to Dale Carnegie, as it were. There is an over-abundance of people doing just that, and judging from this post and many of the comments, a lot of people seem to want others to conform to that sort of uniform "persuasive" behavior. I'm not saying it isn't effective, but surely not everybody needs to do that. Isn't there room in this big world for a few genuine personalities?
- rdrimmie 15y ago
  Sure there's room, but the thesis is that rms' personality does disservice to his cause. He is willing to email documents around to collaborate using Free Software, but he's not willing to market effectively.
- ugh 15y ago
  If you portray yourself as someone who wants to be persuasive, you better be prepared for being criticized when you are not living up to your mission. There is nothing wrong with not wanting to be persuasive if you do anything other than persuasion but RMS is very much in the persuasion business.
- blhack 15y ago
  Of course there is, but I think in some ways it hurts RMS, and it hurts the image of the FSF. A good friend of mine (a fellow hacker, actually a much much better hacker than me) and I were talking about Richard Stallman the other day. The guy deserves an enormous amount of credit for his contributions to humanity. Think about what happened as a result of GCC. Think of how many things were enabled because of that. Right now I'm sitting in one of the design studios over at ASU borrowing some bandwidth and hanging out with one of my friends while she works on an architectural model. Something that I never realized until I spent some time talking with her was how unbelievably lucky we are as nerds. I was talking to her about what an architect hopes for after college. Spend tons of $$ on school->hope you get a good internship->Hope you get hired somewhere good->hope that you get the privilege of working on something cool->maybe get a good job doing something fun. You have to spend other people's money, lots of it, in order to do cool things in architecture. With open source software (and I understand that GCC isn't all of open source software, but it's important) this isn't true at all. My passion is for building websites. My webservers run linux, I use python as a scripting language, I use apache as a webserver, I use mysql as a database. If I get really big, maybe I'll use nginx as a proxy cache. The only limiting factor in how much stuff I can build on my computer is how fast I can input new information into my brain. I'm constrained by my ability to learn and that is pretty much it. This is huge, and this is something that is pretty unique to computers. And think about the ways in which this freedom to create has revolutionized the way that humans communicate with one another. Think about how equalizing this is across the economic spectrum. (I'm sorry, I went kindof off topic there...) You've got all of these absolutely wonderful things happening in OSS. If somebody wanted to give Dr. Stallman a Nobel Prize for contributions to humanity, I wouldn't bat an eye. But to "the outside world" a lot of these things are hidden behind a personality that is incredibly off-putting, and that's a little bit tragic. I wish Stallman was a tiny bit more "normal" just because I want more people exposed to the things that he has done.
cgray4 15y ago
I really don't think the signs that are used to illustrate this article are comparable. The Kindle/Swindle sign isn't making up a new name for the Kindle. It is saying that this thing in the sign is a swindle. You shouldn't buy it because it makes false promises. If a person made up a sign with a bottle of Coke and put "Tastes Great" beneath it, that person wouldn't be calling Coke "Tastes Great". Sure, it's negative advertising, but that doesn't put it on the level of Lyndon Larouche advertising. It might be on the level of the people who called Microsoft M$ on Slashdot 15 years ago, but I don't really think it is. I didn't see the talk, so I don't know if he called it a swindle during the talk but if he did, then I would put the remark in the latter category. I'm even less sure what the objection to the other sign is. Is it the word "sins"? They want you to go to their website to see the things that they don't like about Windows 7. Mainly, I would guess, in the way that it restricts your freedom. What is a short word that is less incendiary that means things-I-don't-like-about-a-thing-that-restricts-my-freedom? Finally, "baby steps"? In this day and age? I've used almost exclusively free software for over ten years. It's really not that hard. I prefer it. So start using free software or don't. I don't care. But don't pretend it's a big hassle that someone told you that you should. (To be clear, I'm not a total apologist for RMS. He has said some distasteful things about women and from what I hear his hygiene isn't the greatest either.)
- dget 15y ago
  In his talk, he referred to the Kindle nearly exclusively as the "Amazon Swindle," only clarifying that he was talking about the Kindle at the end, for what its' worth.
  - cgray4 15y ago
    That's unfortunate. In the past, I've had more respect for the FSF because they generally refrained from such juvenile word substitutions.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
6ren 15y ago
> When we asked, you mentioned that you do not write much code anymore. This may be partly why he seems out of touch with programmers.
- zdw 15y ago
  He also went through a period of time where he was having wrist trouble which cut down on his programming output: http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch09.html#15416 http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch09.html#15416 (the zinger here would be a comment on finger gymnastics required to enter all those parenthesis is elisp)
mark_l_watson 15y ago
I don't think that Stallman should tone down his message. Sure, he can be rough, but so what. (I've experienced this in email with him when he asked about re-releasing some of my early Lisp books under the FSF doc license, but that is OK.) The world needs people with strong contrarian opinions and even if I don't always agree I value what they say. Way off topic, but: I can imagine a future world where there is an underground using free software, private but linked ad-hoc networks, etc. The victories of the super rich over the rest of us in the last decade actually have me looking at fiction like the world in Gibson's 'Johnny Mnemonic' as a real possibility for the future.
- abrahamsen 15y ago
  RMS wrote a short story on the premise http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
cosmok 15y ago
It is almost impractical for me to be like Stallman and shun a lot of Hardware/Software. But, I do not wish for Stallman to be any less radical than he is as: by being radical he gains my attention and some of his thoughts and ideas stick with me and, it has made me think about 'freedom' while buying any piece of Hardware/Software. I would never want to work him on anything - I watched him tear apart people while responding to their concerns - but, people like him are essential to the Free Software movement.
jberryman 15y ago
I really appreciated the tone of this piece. Respectful, well written and convincing.
autarch 15y ago
I think Stallman needs to read this book - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159056233X http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159056233X Activism doesn't need to be mysterious, there's lots of psychological research that you can look to when you ask "how can I convince people to {go vegan, support software freedom, support gay rights}?"
gsf 15y ago
I wonder how many 24-year-old CS students have given this same advice to Stallman in the last 25 years. Not that Alexey shouldn't voice his thoughts, but it's well-trod ground.
3dFlatLander 15y ago
When I first started to become computer savvy, Stallman had already moved into the activist stage, and further away from programming. I had always heard that he was a great programmer. But, I've never actually seen any code he's written. The earliest software versions I can find on gnu.org's FTP are from 1994--I'm guessing most of the projects had multiple contributors by this time. Anyone happen to know where some pure Stallman code can be found?
- sipefree 15y ago
  apt-get source emacs
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
derrida 15y ago
I've always found a connection between brilliance and "yelling at cars on the side of the road." Take the good with the bad.
- polynomial 15y ago
  I've read a number of your books and never drew that connection before, thanks. Also, I thought that guy looked a lot like RMS, but I was going too fast to get a good look.
originalgeek 15y ago
It's too late for RMS. Once a pickle, never a cucumber.
msutherl 15y ago
What bother's me about Dr. Stallman is that he is concerned with particular freedoms, such as the freedom to tinker with software, and brands this as the freedom. This is ideology. For me the most important freedom is the freedom to get my work done with the best available tools. Often the best available tools are not "free" software, especially if you do anything other than web or systems programming. I actually prefer to see him marginalize his views – it helps intelligent people who are not interested in buying into other people's ideology realize that he is an egomaniacal cult leader without needing to waste time considering the soundness of his ideas. I prefer the "open source" guys.
- emilsedgh 15y ago
  you don't give a damn about freedom, you just want a good tool. Its not really that hard to understand the difference.
  - msutherl 15y ago
    What is "freedom"?
omouse 15y ago
Saying "Big Brother" is simply telling the truth. When the US government and other governments feel it's okay to illegally wiretap people and the TSA subjects you to full body searches and cellphones make you easy to locate and the US government uses drones to kill people in other and the NSA wants backdoors into encryption schemes and ways to break them, I think it's safe to call them Big Brother.
omouse 15y ago
Also, Stallman has been taking baby steps for a very very long time. He didn't start with a completely free software machine at all. He used a proprietary compiler at first, a proprietary editor, etc. in order to build everything up. In today's world, it is possible to do all of your work using free software. It may not be Google Docs, but LibreOffice is pretty awesome and you can just use Empathy or Pidgin IM to talk to people over an XMPP network. At some point you have to pry yourself away from proprietary software and the sooner you do it, the less likely you are to cave in and use more proprietary software. Stallman has been repeating the same ideas for years. It's hard to sound persuasive or charismatic when you're not trying to be a leader and when you've been saying the same damned thing over and over and having to adapt it to the realities of today (which could have been avoided if only more people had listened in the first place...)
gnufs 15y ago
Relevantly, FSF's new executive director is asking for feedback, and specifically criticism: http://lists.fsf.org/archive/html/info-member/2011-04/msg00001.html http://lists.fsf.org/archive/html/info-member/2011-04/msg000...
FrojoS 15y ago
I respect RMS a lot, too, but I have to agree with this piece. He clearly tries to be a PR/sells person first of all. An advocate for free software in all industries and all other parts of society. Why then, doesn't he play to the rules of society where it makes obvious sense? As much as I find his stubbornness personally sympathetic, I doubt he is doing the FSF a favor at this point. As an example I know from the people at MIT Open Course Ware, that even though they share a very similar view on free information, and RMS can show great achievements, it was really hard to use RMS as an effective advocate for OCW. The key audience was simply turned off by his appearance. As smug as that might sound. In reality, you can hardly put people into sales, when they refuse to wear a tie every so often.
kraemate 15y ago
I had submitted something about Stallman and his genius some days back : [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2471620 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2471620]
danenania 15y ago
Ignoring the particulars of the issue, I think it's sad that non-mainstream views on 9/11 automatically makes someone a valid target for ad hominem attacks, even in educated and intellectual circles. This form of social exclusion is essentially nationalistic and a dangerous trend. While conspiracy fetishism is unfortunate, it's good to have people questioning the official line, and it isn't as if all the facts around 9/11 are clear cut--yes, there is much unsupported speculation that can be thrown out immediately, but simply positing government involvement on some level is not a priori outlandish. I don't think we should expect anything different from Stallman, or any radical thinker. Controversy is part of the job.
- cooldeal 15y ago
  The issue is not that he holds such views, the issue is that he brings it up in the context of free software in order to push the line "the gummint is out of get us", which makes it a little unpalatable to many.
  - danenania 15y ago
    I agree it's not effective rhetorically. Digging into any controversial issue is rhetorically risky for a public figure. What is worrying to me is the disproportionate sensitivity Americans have to this particular bit of controversy. All he said is he believes the US government was involved in 9/11. He didn't say how or in what capacity. Yet based on many of the responses, you'd think he said that Lizard Man Bush flew the planes himself by remote control. The author complains that Stallman is marginalizing himself, yet if he and others are willing to attempt to marginalize him based on unpopular (not crazy) political opinions, who's really to blame?
poink 15y ago
I think RMS's most likely response to this article would be, "If I hadn't been so crazy, you wouldn't have written about my talk at all." If I were in his shoes, I'd be crazy too.
ralfd 15y ago
Sorry, I cant read something about RMS without remembering his horrific foot incident: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ
bad_user 15y ago
today's proprietary stuff isn't marijuana; it's heroin, and it's really, really good I beg to differ -- today's proprietary software is exactly like marijuana. When it comes to freedom, there's is no black & white classification, only shades of gray. And the whitest of them all are the BSD-like licenses, which are frowned upon by the FSF. And the reason I think proprietary software is like marijuana is because you CAN be careful when using it, you can also take it in small dosages where it makes sense, you're only required to use it responsibly to not end up hooked with freedoms lost. And of course, for some people marijuana usage turns into heroin -- but everybody fears heroin and heroin comes with a heafty price for the junkies, which isn't that good in the eyes of consumers (best things in life tend to be cheap ;)) Also, leaving this analogy behind -- let's take as example GIMP. Gimp is awesome for what it does and I actually think its grotesque interface is the reason why I ended up working with masks, really groking effects like smart-sharpening. But if you're deep into photography, using Gimp is unacceptable. First, it has serious limitations like 8-bits per color (which means you're losing color info, when importing from RAW formats, or when composing layers -- and as a practical consequence, correcting over/under-exposed photos becomes a nightmare). CMYK support is hackish at best, and photographers (professional or passionate amateurs) do print their photos (whether it's for selling, or for doing exhibits). Then, while the UI forces you to learn about the inner-workings of digital image processing, it becomes a pain in the ass to quickly retouch hundreds of photos (unless you can do them as a batch, with some scripting, but since every photo is unique, no, you can't). So comparing a product like Adobe Photoshop, which provides real/measurable value to photographers, with a drug that you can get rid of -- that's stretching it a lot. I also view a product like Photoshop as something that gives you more freedom for expression -- also saving you bucks which you'd spend otherwise on extremely high-priced gear.
flocial 15y ago
Isn't marginalization the whole point of FSF? They want to attract people committed to free software not appeal to popular culture. Dressing RMS up and giving him public speaking lessons will not change the ideology. His image as it stands is consistent with his image, the complete opposite of Steve Jobs.
AlexeyMK 15y ago
I definitely hadn't expected as much feedback and discussion as the post got; thanks, everybody! In case you're curious, I got an email back from RMS: http://alexeymk.com/dear-dr-stallman-the-aftermath http://alexeymk.com/dear-dr-stallman-the-aftermath
- bxr 15y ago
  Thats it? That response is a bit of a letdown (but in a way exactly what I'd expect from rms). It kind of goes without saying that you're going to be skeptical of things said by someone who disagrees with your philosophy, but I wouldn't fault him for using that as a preface to a discussion, except that's all he says. It make it seem like he just dismissed your message without giving it any thought. Maybe that kind of hypocrisy is needed in a advocate like himself, implore people to heed your message, ignore listening to anything that might change your attitudes.

493 points by AlexeyMK 15y ago

This man is arguably the greatest hacker of all time. He's hacking the culture, he's been incredibly successful. It's shocking and irresponsible that people are commenting on "what rms says" based only on hearsay, speculation and mis-quotes. At least take the time to Google before condemning the man for things he never said.

AlexeyMK 15y ago
The link to the video of the lecture was in the first sentence of the letter. Apologies if this was unclear.
- rjbond3rd 15y ago
  Apologies to you but I was referring to commenters on this thread, not your post. Specifically, the 9/11 stuff. I should have replied to those directly, but was disgusted. My apologies once again because it has nothing to do with you.

st3fan 15y ago

When you talk about the risk of software as a service, you can mention that the US gov't is attempting to collect identifying user data from the Wikileaks Twitter account, or the recent domain name seizures of PokerStars and other online gambling websites. These are practical consequences of a lack of Free Software Huh Wut!? How is free or open software going to prevent any company from receiving a court order to disclose data about its users? This has nothing to do with technical implementation of a service.

AlexeyMK 15y ago
Agreed, the point isn't straight-forward. Stallman's argument was against software-as-a-service and in favor of doing computing locally. If we were using a decentralized twitter alternative like identi.ca or status.net, then all of the IP/log data wouldn't be in Twitter's hands to give in the first place. This is the 'if you let other people do your computing for you, you lose control/freedom over your data' argument. The same logic (albeit less convincingly) applies to PokerStars - if we were using some sort of Bitcoin-driven, no-single-point-of-failure architecture for online poker, the US government wouldn't have been able to shut down the operation nearly as easily.

sliverstorm 15y ago

On the flipside, if Stallman was less crazy I wouldn't have my second-favorite comic strip of all time: http://xkcd.com/225/ http://xkcd.com/225/

patrickaljord 15y ago
Relevant http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/04/19/life-imitates-xkcd-part-ii-richard-stallman/ http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/04/19/life-imitates-xkcd-part-ii-r...

danieldk 15y ago

Years back, I used to be an FSF member. Not that I liked the GPL much (in fact, I mostly use the Apache License), but they raised important issues, and had a track record of investing into fine software (GNU) that I benefitted from a lot. However, their campaigns were getting so off-target, that much of my sympathy dwindled, and I ended my membership. Childish 'anti' advertising, such as 'BadVista' and DDoSing Apple's genius bars (gee, that's will convince anyone who was visiting an Apple Store) only made the whole free software movement look bad, childish, and unsocial. To this day, they seem to put their energy into almost hilarious campaigns (Windows 7 sins? Seriously?). This open letter is on the mark, their current course only marginalizes the FSF and part of the FLOSS community. Whatever happened to relying on your own strengths, rather than caricaturizing the competition?

fluidcruft 15y ago
I am also a lapsed member exactly for the same reasons. The camp makes it impossible to spread the word (for example by linking to their site) because I feel like the cheesiness of the presentation would reflect poorly on me. Frankly they look like a bunch of clowns. Which is unfortunate. I do think they are entitled to their own flair and personality. Thankfully the GPL website is less polarizing. The free software manifesto is great and it isn't packaged in a cloak of easily-dismissed looniness.
lewispb 15y ago
Funny you should mention childish: http://www.fsf.org/facebook http://www.fsf.org/facebook
vog 15y ago
I'm a happy fellow of the FSFE (http://fsfe.org/ http://fsfe.org/), the European pendant to the FSF. Sometimes we also discuss FSF campaigns, and usually agree that those would almost certainly be counter-productive here in Europe, especially things like the "Windows 7 sins". However, we always thought: Well, the USA have a different culture, so maybe this kind of campaign is needed there, and probably our style of campaign would not work there. (With "our style" I especially mean: not to exaggerate, and to prefer positive campaigns over negative campaigns.) It is interesting to see that our objections seem to be also valid within the USA, too. Maybe it's time for some people to join the FSF and to encourage them to learn from their European branch.

michaelpinto 15y ago

If Stallman wasn't a crazy hippy he wouldn't have been into this cause years before even the first dot.com boom. It's unfair for someone to insist that a visionary go corporate all these years later because you feel uncomfortable. If you want to be the next generation spokesman than become that, but don't waste time trying to make a zebra shed his stripes.

AlexeyMK 15y ago
Thanks for making that point. I want to make perfectly clear that I have a tremendous amount of respect for RMS and everything that he's done. By no means would I recommend that he compromise his ideology or 'go corporate.' All I'm saying is: almost everybody at his talk (already a self-selecting group) was put off by the tone and extremist nature of his delivery. His message got lost, and that sucks - it's an important message.
- patrickaljord 15y ago
  But his eccentricity and radicalism are what made the fsf and gnu possible in the first place. Anyone with his skills in the 70s turned into a millionaire by the end of the 80's. Instead he decided to lock himself up and write emacs, gcc, glibc etc and give them away for free living on donations and minimum wage freelancing. The thing is that you can't call him on his eccentricity and radicalism when this is exactly what got him there in the first place. Sure, he's not business friendly but we already have very powerful entities such as google advocating foss in a business friendly way. I still find his speeches entertaining and things like swindle and digital restrictions don't offend me, they're actually refreshing compared to the usual politically correct speeches.
  - bostonpete 15y ago
    I dunno. Couldn't you use that same sort of logic to argue against criticizing any great/commendable person? We shouldn't criticize them because those character traits are part of the reason they accomplished these other things over here. Then again, maybe the criticism they've received all along has helped to drive them to those successes, so we actually should be criticizing them...

smellyboy 15y ago

Whilst I'm against negative campaigning, rms has been and still is the consciousness of free software. We would be in a very bad place if not for him. yeah sometimes he's a dick, but then we all are.

emilsedgh 15y ago

A few points i would like to remind everyone who criticizes rms. 1) rms is a radical guy. You cannot change that. He fights for what he thinks is right. He is not the kind of person you can ask to censor himself. If he thinks u.s goverment is to blame for 9/11, no matter how saying it in a lecture seems childish, he will say it. If you invite rms for a lecture, he is coming with his radicalism. That is to be expected. You cannot invite rms and expect steve jobs. 2) rms is a practical guy. stop acting like he's a mad man who knows nothing. He started GNU, wrote emacs, glibc, gcc and probably others. He created the concept of free software and wrote a license as good as GPL to defend it. He also managed to gather a community around this very crazy idea of free software. 3) rms doesnt want people only to use free software. he wants people to value their freedom, and as a result of that, use free software. It doesnt really matter if whole world uses android instead of ios. The point is, these days, most people involved in open source community, do not even care about free software and the freedom it offers. Most people are interested in technological advancements or affects of an open source project on market. None of them are concerns for rms. And, what i said above is just what i interpreted from his actions and are not facts.

patrickaljord 15y ago
> If he thinks u.s goverment is to blame for 9/11, no matter how saying it in a lecture seems childish, he will say it. By the way he doesn't believe that. Last time I read about his opinion on the subject he said that proofs were lacking on both sides (truther and non-truther) but that it was probably the work of religious fundamentalists (either christians or muslims).
- mbateman 15y ago
  I'm not sure that agnosticism on this issue is much less crazy, but okay.
- schrototo 15y ago
  > ... proofs were lacking on both sides ... religious fundamentalists (either christians or muslims). These are equally ridiculous statements. We know who did it, we know how they did it, we know why they did it. People just can't accept that enormous events can have relatively simple causes.

elwin 15y ago

I hear this opinion a lot, and I think it slightly misses the point. The open-source world already has plenty of socially conventional advocates promoting their products. If the FSF became an ordinary open-source software promoter, it wouldn't have nearly as much influence as, say, the Ubuntu marketing team. But there aren't many organizations trying to derive software principles from objective logic instead of subjective cost-benefit analysis, who insist that freedom and controlling your own computing is not just another feature but a vital issue. RMS may not convert many Windows users, but he does come up with valuable insights. If no one else is going to be a vocal, uncompromising advocate for software users, I can cringe through Windows 7 Sins and jokes about letting presidents drown.

Typhon 15y ago

Can somebody tell me when exactly did Stallman say that someone who used proprietary software was a hater of freedom ? In the last interview I read, he seemed able to understand that almost nobody would go as far as him on the side of software freedom. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/031411-richard-stallman.html?page=2 http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/031411-richard-stallma...

MostAwesomeDude 15y ago
I have no citation, but he did say things along those lines when I saw him at Portland State not even a month ago.
MostAwesomeDude 15y ago
I have no citation, but he did say things along those lines when I saw him at Portland State not even a month ago.

lell 15y ago

Proponents of the FSF desire the hegemony of free software with the same uncompromising fervor as revolutionaries in russia desired communism in 1917. And the analogy does not end there. In many ways, free software is a communists dream. Marx hoped that technology would make human labour redundant through mechanisation of production, allowing humans to spend all their time doing r&d (or r&r) --- he hoped that stuff like food would become free to create. With software, it's already possible to make this a reality, as programs can be replicated without cost. All other things being equal, this should lead to great benefits to society, a prospect that has attracted RMS and others. That being said, it is as useless to ask RMS to compromise as it would be to ask those revolutionaries to in russia, 1917. Furthermore, asking them to take baby steps is condescending, and they will ignore this advice. The reason is that their motivation differs from the majority of the hackernews readership. Sure, if they took baby steps and focused on PR and focused their agenda, free software might become more mainstream, and many entrepreneurs and small companies would benefit. But they don't want entrepreneurs and small companies to benefit, esp. if it means making these compromises. Essentially, this is why I find articles like this condescending. The point of FSF is to improve society by advocating universal adoption of free software. Entrepreneurs indirectly benefit from these endeavors. Entrepreneurs then complain that the FSF could be more effective if they compromised their platforms. But this is sort of disingenuous because it's essentially the entrepreneurs telling the FSF to redirect effort that would benefit all of society to effort that would benefit the entrepreneurs. Granted, the former efforts are harder than the latter, but it is no one's place to tell the FSF how to direct their charity and advocacy, especially not someone who stands to gain from the reallocation that they themselves suggest.

patrickaljord 15y ago
> Proponents of the FSF desire the hegemony of free software with the same uncompromising fervor as revolutionaries in russia desired communism in 1917. Sorry but this is not true. Stallman already said many times that he doesn't think proprietary software should be banned. In fact the first version of the emacs license used to oblige people to redistribute their modifications even when there were no re-distribution. RMS realized that was fascist and decided to only ask for source in case of redistribution (as in the gpl later).

Tichy 15y ago

Damn you, Photoshop (presumably the only piece of closed software some people just can't do without).

hernan7 15y ago
Lots of proprietary software in the music industry too. Even if you want to create music as a hobby on your computer, things like samples are all in proprietary formats.
- vog 15y ago
  > things like samples are all in proprietary formats This is not exactly true. There do exist free samples in open formats, for instance the Freepats project: http://freepats.zenvoid.org/ http://freepats.zenvoid.org/
- ramchip 15y ago
  Count hardware design and embedded systems in as well. Many of us work in a morass of proprietary tools and obfuscated IP cores.

leoc 15y ago

Eben Moglen http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/ http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/ is a more winning spokesman for the FSF these days. I hope he'll forgive me for mentioning that there's plenty of him on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=eben+moglen http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=eben+moglen :)

hubb 15y ago
eben's a wonderful speaker, but i believe he's resigned from actively working for the FSF? i could be wrong
- mvalle 15y ago
  I believe he now works for the Software Freedom Law Center, which is sort of affiliated with the FSF.
- leoc 15y ago
  His homepage still lists a FSF affilation, and I'm pretty sure he's still serving as the GPLv3's attorney (as 'twere).

mbateman 15y ago

Just a quick thought from skimming this thread: It seems like there are two issues, radicalism and eccentricity. Saying that the government may have caused 9/11 is eccentric. It's crazy and "radical" in an uninteresting way, and most intelligent people will ignore it. But the idea that one shouldn't use Google docs if one values freedom is radical. I think RMS is completely and totally wrong, but the radicalism or apparent impracticality of the idea is not what I object to. The cheesy campaigns and slogans have elements of both. They are radical ideas presented in an eccentric way. I think the 7 sins stuff, Swindle, etc., are stupid and childish and really have no upside. But contrary to what the OP seems to suggest, while many people are turned off by radicalism, radicals are influential way out of proportion to what one would be led to expect by making a quick survey of people's negative reactions to them. It can be hard to separate what's radical and what's merely eccentric. Especially if you're the one trying to figure out how to present radical ideas.

waterhouse 15y ago
Yes, I came to the comments intending to say that. I agree with the author that talking about 9/11 that way just makes him look crazy, but he should not in any way cut down on his free software rhetoric because of "practical" considerations. An activist like him is selling two things: his ideas, and a call to action. If he restricted himself to giving "practical" recommendations, he would no longer be selling his ideas; he might get some people to switch to using free software, but they wouldn't be part of the "movement"; they'd switch back to proprietary software as soon as their job or some particular task required it, and then he'd be left with nothing. Whereas if he argues for his ideas, and takes them to their logical conclusion, he will convince a few people (many, if he's lucky) that will likely become members for life (if not necessarily active members) and can build a real community that has a chance of growing and eventually achieving total success. Now, it might help to give people some things they can realistically do right now. But the life of a movement lies in its radical members, and "practicality" should not come at the expense of the promotion of the (radical) ideas. Cf. the abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement.
pw 15y ago
> radicals are influential way out of proportion to what one would be led to expect by making a quick survey of people's negative reactions to them. Is radicalism a hack for getting attention? Is RMS's radicalism such a hack? If not, could it have started out as such? Is Swindle, RMS's use of 9/11, et alia a misguided attempt to use this radicalism hack?

jrockway 15y ago

I don't think this guy gets it. Clearly, he has drawn the line at "proprietary software is fine, as long as it's useful to me". To RMS, though, that's not where the line is: he simply refuses to use software he can't tweak or audit. That's not like calling Obama Hitler or saying global warming is a scientific fraud. It's just an ideology, like not driving a car or only eating foods that don't come from animals. Nothing wrong with that, so why all the hate? This article is sillier than calling the kindle "swindle".

estel 15y ago
If the spokesperson for the Vegetarian Society was trying to persuade others to become vegetarian by branding all farmers "murderers" and engaging in ridiculous rhetoric, I think other vegetarians might be concerned that their message wasn't being conveyed appropriately and was alienating them from the mainstream, thereby resulting in fewer vegetarians.
- rdouble 15y ago
  I can't tell if you are being facetious, but the main argument for vegetarianism is that "meat is murder."
  - estel 15y ago
    I guess I meant PETA-levels of extremism. Like this: http://blog.peta.org.uk/2011/01/peta-takes-meat-warning-to-cardiff/ http://blog.peta.org.uk/2011/01/peta-takes-meat-warning-to-c...
  - rosser 15y ago
    For many of the vegetarians I've known, that's a secondary argument, the primary being a healthier lifestyle.
    - rdouble 15y ago
      I know people like that, too. However, if I had to bet money on the primary motivation of the majority of the world's vegetarians, I would bet they hold ethical arguments against eating meat.

pgbovine 15y ago

minor nit: i don't think rms is a "Dr.", since he didn't get a Ph.D. (unless he has a secret M.D.) From wikipedia: "Stallman then enrolled as a graduate student in physics at MIT, but abandoned his graduate studies while remaining a programmer at the MIT AI Laboratory. Stallman abandoned his pursuit of a doctorate in physics in favor of programming." perhaps he has an honorary doctorate?

roadnottaken 15y ago
From the same wikipedia article: 1996: Honorary doctorate from Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology [85] 2001: Honorary doctorate, from the University of Glasgow [89] 2003: Honorary doctorate, from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel [91] 2004: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad Nacional de Salta. [92] 2007: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad de Los Angeles de Chimbote. 2007: Honorary doctorate, from the University of Pavia [93] 2008: Honorary doctorate from the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo, in Peru 2009: Honorary doctorate, from Lakehead University [94][95] RTFA :)
- cgray4 15y ago
  I don't think an honorary doctorate entitles one to be referred to as Dr. In fact, most people with doctorates that I know would rather not be referred to as Dr. In the case of this article, it seems like the author is trying to be overly-formal in the manner of a Keith Olbermann rant.
  - yahelc 15y ago
    Seems like he's referred to frequently as 'Dr. Stallman', including on gnu.org. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22Dr.+Stallman%22+site%3Agnu.org&aq=f&aqi=&aql=f&oq= http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22Dr....
    - cgray4 15y ago
      Yuck.

angus77 15y ago

I pretty much agreed with everything except the ridiculous idea that Stallman should try out Google Docs so he could see how "good" it is.

jackvalentine 15y ago
I don't understand your objection. It is an amazingly simple tool for collaborative editing and I don't know of any free software alternatives that are as easily usable.
- yesbabyyes 15y ago
  Etherpad?
- angus77 15y ago
  I don't doubt it, but if you think Stallman is interested in a product because it's "better" than another product then you really don't know what Stallman's values are at all. Stallman's not objecting to it on the grounds of it being poor software, nor is he making the claim that it is poor software. If someone's on a diet and refuses to eat chocolate because that would be against the point of the diet, countering with "I think you should try it---it tastes so good" completely misses the point.
  - jackvalentine 15y ago
    To act like free software can entirely ignore what closed-source software does is a bizzare position to take though. Simply the act of using high quality software (closed or open) gives you insight, inspiration and direction for whatever you're working on. I know Stallman isn't interested in products because they're "better". But he should be - even if only to push the free software movement to make itself even better.

andywood 15y ago

I dislike the idea that every single leader in the world must only conduct themselves according to Dale Carnegie, as it were. There is an over-abundance of people doing just that, and judging from this post and many of the comments, a lot of people seem to want others to conform to that sort of uniform "persuasive" behavior. I'm not saying it isn't effective, but surely not everybody needs to do that. Isn't there room in this big world for a few genuine personalities?

rdrimmie 15y ago
Sure there's room, but the thesis is that rms' personality does disservice to his cause. He is willing to email documents around to collaborate using Free Software, but he's not willing to market effectively.
ugh 15y ago
If you portray yourself as someone who wants to be persuasive, you better be prepared for being criticized when you are not living up to your mission. There is nothing wrong with not wanting to be persuasive if you do anything other than persuasion but RMS is very much in the persuasion business.
blhack 15y ago
Of course there is, but I think in some ways it hurts RMS, and it hurts the image of the FSF. A good friend of mine (a fellow hacker, actually a much much better hacker than me) and I were talking about Richard Stallman the other day. The guy deserves an enormous amount of credit for his contributions to humanity. Think about what happened as a result of GCC. Think of how many things were enabled because of that. Right now I'm sitting in one of the design studios over at ASU borrowing some bandwidth and hanging out with one of my friends while she works on an architectural model. Something that I never realized until I spent some time talking with her was how unbelievably lucky we are as nerds. I was talking to her about what an architect hopes for after college. Spend tons of $$ on school->hope you get a good internship->Hope you get hired somewhere good->hope that you get the privilege of working on something cool->maybe get a good job doing something fun. You have to spend other people's money, lots of it, in order to do cool things in architecture. With open source software (and I understand that GCC isn't all of open source software, but it's important) this isn't true at all. My passion is for building websites. My webservers run linux, I use python as a scripting language, I use apache as a webserver, I use mysql as a database. If I get really big, maybe I'll use nginx as a proxy cache. The only limiting factor in how much stuff I can build on my computer is how fast I can input new information into my brain. I'm constrained by my ability to learn and that is pretty much it. This is huge, and this is something that is pretty unique to computers. And think about the ways in which this freedom to create has revolutionized the way that humans communicate with one another. Think about how equalizing this is across the economic spectrum. (I'm sorry, I went kindof off topic there...) You've got all of these absolutely wonderful things happening in OSS. If somebody wanted to give Dr. Stallman a Nobel Prize for contributions to humanity, I wouldn't bat an eye. But to "the outside world" a lot of these things are hidden behind a personality that is incredibly off-putting, and that's a little bit tragic. I wish Stallman was a tiny bit more "normal" just because I want more people exposed to the things that he has done.

cgray4 15y ago

I really don't think the signs that are used to illustrate this article are comparable. The Kindle/Swindle sign isn't making up a new name for the Kindle. It is saying that this thing in the sign is a swindle. You shouldn't buy it because it makes false promises. If a person made up a sign with a bottle of Coke and put "Tastes Great" beneath it, that person wouldn't be calling Coke "Tastes Great". Sure, it's negative advertising, but that doesn't put it on the level of Lyndon Larouche advertising. It might be on the level of the people who called Microsoft M$ on Slashdot 15 years ago, but I don't really think it is. I didn't see the talk, so I don't know if he called it a swindle during the talk but if he did, then I would put the remark in the latter category. I'm even less sure what the objection to the other sign is. Is it the word "sins"? They want you to go to their website to see the things that they don't like about Windows 7. Mainly, I would guess, in the way that it restricts your freedom. What is a short word that is less incendiary that means things-I-don't-like-about-a-thing-that-restricts-my-freedom? Finally, "baby steps"? In this day and age? I've used almost exclusively free software for over ten years. It's really not that hard. I prefer it. So start using free software or don't. I don't care. But don't pretend it's a big hassle that someone told you that you should. (To be clear, I'm not a total apologist for RMS. He has said some distasteful things about women and from what I hear his hygiene isn't the greatest either.)

dget 15y ago
In his talk, he referred to the Kindle nearly exclusively as the "Amazon Swindle," only clarifying that he was talking about the Kindle at the end, for what its' worth.
- cgray4 15y ago
  That's unfortunate. In the past, I've had more respect for the FSF because they generally refrained from such juvenile word substitutions.
deleted 15y ago
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6ren 15y ago

> When we asked, you mentioned that you do not write much code anymore. This may be partly why he seems out of touch with programmers.

zdw 15y ago
He also went through a period of time where he was having wrist trouble which cut down on his programming output: http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch09.html#15416 http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch09.html#15416 (the zinger here would be a comment on finger gymnastics required to enter all those parenthesis is elisp)

mark_l_watson 15y ago

I don't think that Stallman should tone down his message. Sure, he can be rough, but so what. (I've experienced this in email with him when he asked about re-releasing some of my early Lisp books under the FSF doc license, but that is OK.) The world needs people with strong contrarian opinions and even if I don't always agree I value what they say. Way off topic, but: I can imagine a future world where there is an underground using free software, private but linked ad-hoc networks, etc. The victories of the super rich over the rest of us in the last decade actually have me looking at fiction like the world in Gibson's 'Johnny Mnemonic' as a real possibility for the future.

abrahamsen 15y ago
RMS wrote a short story on the premise http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

cosmok 15y ago

It is almost impractical for me to be like Stallman and shun a lot of Hardware/Software. But, I do not wish for Stallman to be any less radical than he is as: by being radical he gains my attention and some of his thoughts and ideas stick with me and, it has made me think about 'freedom' while buying any piece of Hardware/Software. I would never want to work him on anything - I watched him tear apart people while responding to their concerns - but, people like him are essential to the Free Software movement.

jberryman 15y ago

I really appreciated the tone of this piece. Respectful, well written and convincing.

autarch 15y ago

I think Stallman needs to read this book - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159056233X http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159056233X Activism doesn't need to be mysterious, there's lots of psychological research that you can look to when you ask "how can I convince people to {go vegan, support software freedom, support gay rights}?"

gsf 15y ago

I wonder how many 24-year-old CS students have given this same advice to Stallman in the last 25 years. Not that Alexey shouldn't voice his thoughts, but it's well-trod ground.

3dFlatLander 15y ago

When I first started to become computer savvy, Stallman had already moved into the activist stage, and further away from programming. I had always heard that he was a great programmer. But, I've never actually seen any code he's written. The earliest software versions I can find on gnu.org's FTP are from 1994--I'm guessing most of the projects had multiple contributors by this time. Anyone happen to know where some pure Stallman code can be found?

sipefree 15y ago
apt-get source emacs
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]

derrida 15y ago

I've always found a connection between brilliance and "yelling at cars on the side of the road." Take the good with the bad.

polynomial 15y ago
I've read a number of your books and never drew that connection before, thanks. Also, I thought that guy looked a lot like RMS, but I was going too fast to get a good look.

originalgeek 15y ago

It's too late for RMS. Once a pickle, never a cucumber.

msutherl 15y ago

What bother's me about Dr. Stallman is that he is concerned with particular freedoms, such as the freedom to tinker with software, and brands this as the freedom. This is ideology. For me the most important freedom is the freedom to get my work done with the best available tools. Often the best available tools are not "free" software, especially if you do anything other than web or systems programming. I actually prefer to see him marginalize his views – it helps intelligent people who are not interested in buying into other people's ideology realize that he is an egomaniacal cult leader without needing to waste time considering the soundness of his ideas. I prefer the "open source" guys.

emilsedgh 15y ago
you don't give a damn about freedom, you just want a good tool. Its not really that hard to understand the difference.
- msutherl 15y ago
  What is "freedom"?

omouse 15y ago

Saying "Big Brother" is simply telling the truth. When the US government and other governments feel it's okay to illegally wiretap people and the TSA subjects you to full body searches and cellphones make you easy to locate and the US government uses drones to kill people in other and the NSA wants backdoors into encryption schemes and ways to break them, I think it's safe to call them Big Brother.

omouse 15y ago

Also, Stallman has been taking baby steps for a very very long time. He didn't start with a completely free software machine at all. He used a proprietary compiler at first, a proprietary editor, etc. in order to build everything up. In today's world, it is possible to do all of your work using free software. It may not be Google Docs, but LibreOffice is pretty awesome and you can just use Empathy or Pidgin IM to talk to people over an XMPP network. At some point you have to pry yourself away from proprietary software and the sooner you do it, the less likely you are to cave in and use more proprietary software. Stallman has been repeating the same ideas for years. It's hard to sound persuasive or charismatic when you're not trying to be a leader and when you've been saying the same damned thing over and over and having to adapt it to the realities of today (which could have been avoided if only more people had listened in the first place...)

gnufs 15y ago

Relevantly, FSF's new executive director is asking for feedback, and specifically criticism: http://lists.fsf.org/archive/html/info-member/2011-04/msg00001.html http://lists.fsf.org/archive/html/info-member/2011-04/msg000...

FrojoS 15y ago

I respect RMS a lot, too, but I have to agree with this piece. He clearly tries to be a PR/sells person first of all. An advocate for free software in all industries and all other parts of society. Why then, doesn't he play to the rules of society where it makes obvious sense? As much as I find his stubbornness personally sympathetic, I doubt he is doing the FSF a favor at this point. As an example I know from the people at MIT Open Course Ware, that even though they share a very similar view on free information, and RMS can show great achievements, it was really hard to use RMS as an effective advocate for OCW. The key audience was simply turned off by his appearance. As smug as that might sound. In reality, you can hardly put people into sales, when they refuse to wear a tie every so often.

kraemate 15y ago

I had submitted something about Stallman and his genius some days back : [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2471620 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2471620]

danenania 15y ago

Ignoring the particulars of the issue, I think it's sad that non-mainstream views on 9/11 automatically makes someone a valid target for ad hominem attacks, even in educated and intellectual circles. This form of social exclusion is essentially nationalistic and a dangerous trend. While conspiracy fetishism is unfortunate, it's good to have people questioning the official line, and it isn't as if all the facts around 9/11 are clear cut--yes, there is much unsupported speculation that can be thrown out immediately, but simply positing government involvement on some level is not a priori outlandish. I don't think we should expect anything different from Stallman, or any radical thinker. Controversy is part of the job.

cooldeal 15y ago
The issue is not that he holds such views, the issue is that he brings it up in the context of free software in order to push the line "the gummint is out of get us", which makes it a little unpalatable to many.
- danenania 15y ago
  I agree it's not effective rhetorically. Digging into any controversial issue is rhetorically risky for a public figure. What is worrying to me is the disproportionate sensitivity Americans have to this particular bit of controversy. All he said is he believes the US government was involved in 9/11. He didn't say how or in what capacity. Yet based on many of the responses, you'd think he said that Lizard Man Bush flew the planes himself by remote control. The author complains that Stallman is marginalizing himself, yet if he and others are willing to attempt to marginalize him based on unpopular (not crazy) political opinions, who's really to blame?

poink 15y ago

I think RMS's most likely response to this article would be, "If I hadn't been so crazy, you wouldn't have written about my talk at all." If I were in his shoes, I'd be crazy too.

ralfd 15y ago

Sorry, I cant read something about RMS without remembering his horrific foot incident: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ

bad_user 15y ago

today's proprietary stuff isn't marijuana; it's heroin, and it's really, really good I beg to differ -- today's proprietary software is exactly like marijuana. When it comes to freedom, there's is no black & white classification, only shades of gray. And the whitest of them all are the BSD-like licenses, which are frowned upon by the FSF. And the reason I think proprietary software is like marijuana is because you CAN be careful when using it, you can also take it in small dosages where it makes sense, you're only required to use it responsibly to not end up hooked with freedoms lost. And of course, for some people marijuana usage turns into heroin -- but everybody fears heroin and heroin comes with a heafty price for the junkies, which isn't that good in the eyes of consumers (best things in life tend to be cheap ;)) Also, leaving this analogy behind -- let's take as example GIMP. Gimp is awesome for what it does and I actually think its grotesque interface is the reason why I ended up working with masks, really groking effects like smart-sharpening. But if you're deep into photography, using Gimp is unacceptable. First, it has serious limitations like 8-bits per color (which means you're losing color info, when importing from RAW formats, or when composing layers -- and as a practical consequence, correcting over/under-exposed photos becomes a nightmare). CMYK support is hackish at best, and photographers (professional or passionate amateurs) do print their photos (whether it's for selling, or for doing exhibits). Then, while the UI forces you to learn about the inner-workings of digital image processing, it becomes a pain in the ass to quickly retouch hundreds of photos (unless you can do them as a batch, with some scripting, but since every photo is unique, no, you can't). So comparing a product like Adobe Photoshop, which provides real/measurable value to photographers, with a drug that you can get rid of -- that's stretching it a lot. I also view a product like Photoshop as something that gives you more freedom for expression -- also saving you bucks which you'd spend otherwise on extremely high-priced gear.

flocial 15y ago

Isn't marginalization the whole point of FSF? They want to attract people committed to free software not appeal to popular culture. Dressing RMS up and giving him public speaking lessons will not change the ideology. His image as it stands is consistent with his image, the complete opposite of Steve Jobs.

AlexeyMK 15y ago

I definitely hadn't expected as much feedback and discussion as the post got; thanks, everybody! In case you're curious, I got an email back from RMS: http://alexeymk.com/dear-dr-stallman-the-aftermath http://alexeymk.com/dear-dr-stallman-the-aftermath

bxr 15y ago
Thats it? That response is a bit of a letdown (but in a way exactly what I'd expect from rms). It kind of goes without saying that you're going to be skeptical of things said by someone who disagrees with your philosophy, but I wouldn't fault him for using that as a preface to a discussion, except that's all he says. It make it seem like he just dismissed your message without giving it any thought. Maybe that kind of hypocrisy is needed in a advocate like himself, implore people to heed your message, ignore listening to anything that might change your attitudes.