Hey, That's a fair question. I wrote the open letter and sent it to RMS in addition to publishing it; given that RMS doesn't frequent HN, it seemed insincere t

Hey, That's a fair question. I wrote the open letter and sent it to RMS in addition to publishing it; given that RMS doesn't frequent HN, it seemed insincere to do otherwise. I did not ask for explicit permission to publish his one-line response; that said, this was a response that I had heard RMS use in conversations while he was here, and did not feel that there was any reasonable violation of privacy in publishing what I considered to be a boilerplate response. As to my intentions: certainly, influencing RMS would be fantastic; that said, from reputation and from meeting in person I've found RMS to be a difficult person to convince (I tried inquiring about his position on certain issues in person, and was interrupted/dismissed several times until I gave up). More realistically, I was looking for a way to collect my thoughts on the matter and did not expect quite this much attention. If I have at all influenced any Free Software advocates that the best argument for their position is a dignified one (cynicalkane proposes William Buckley as an example), that would be a happy accomplishment.