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From reading the other comments here, I understand that it's easy to pick something RMS said and say "Yeah, right..." But you have to keep in mind that RMS adv

From reading the other comments here, I understand that it's easy to pick something RMS said and say "Yeah, right..." But you have to keep in mind that RMS advocates the free software philosophy - the complete left end of the software spectrum - the white angel on your shoulder (not the red devil on the other). And while I find some of his points too radical to implement practically in my own situation, I believe it's very important that we have someone like him in the tech world. As a result, whenever there is a RMS talk, I listen to it. And each time I gain new and valuable perspectives about free software that help guide future decisions.

synergy20 5y ago
You're so correct, can't agree more. Nobody is perfect, focus on one's strength serves everyone better.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  It's just... curious that you rarely see this kind of grace extended to other sorts of radicals and subversives. Not that it doesn't happen ever, but there seem to be certain subjects where we appreciate this role and others where we don't.
geofft 5y ago
> But you have to keep in mind that RMS advocates the free software philosophy - the complete left end of the software spectrum I don't think this is true! There are notable portions of the free software community that are farther left (or whatever direction you may consider it to be) than Stallman and GNU. Debian, for instance, rejects the GFDL as a non-free license when the "invariant sections" or "cover texts" mechanisms are used. These are clauses that allow GFDL documents to include words or even entire chapters that cannot be modified or removed from copies of the document. Stallman uses this clause to include a section about the ethics of the free software movement in documents like the GCC manual. Now, explaining the ethics of the free software movement is of course an important cause. But the manner in which this is done - preventing the GCC manual, or portions of it, from being freely modified in its entirety, from being recombined freely with other documents or code with otherwise-compatible licenses - is, in the view of Debian and others, incompatible with the free software philosophy. This is a farther / more radical view. Stallman's view is that making some unmodifiable and unremovable sections in an otherwise-free work is an acceptable compromise. Debian's view is that there is no room for compromise. And Debian is an entire (and quite influential) Linux distribution. Or take the AGPL, for instance, sponsored by now-defunct startup Affero. There are many people (myself included) who believe the AGPL is a restriction on use, freedom 0, because it prevents you from using AGPL software in certain contexts where the requirements cannot be fulfilled. Suppose I find some AGPL code with a neat algorithm for a session cache, or something, and I want to incorporate that into a TLS library. There is absolutely no way to fulfill the AGPL's requirement to make source code available to users who interact with my code over the network. The clause triggers, because users are indeed interacting over the network, but since there's no TLS extension to offer source, I can't actually do so. This is, it seems to me, as much of a restriction on use as "You can't use this in commercial settings" or "You can't use this for military applications." There's a reason that even GNU still uses the GPL for much of its software - they know the AGPL would make lots of their code effectively unusable in contexts where it ought to be usable. Or, in the left-libertarian direction, consider the folks who want to abolish copyright entirely. The GPL fundamentally relies on copyright law, else it cannot have its particular effect over the MIT/BSD/etc. licenses where it requires redistributing source along with binaries. The GPLv2 itself starts by saying, "To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions" - there is a coherent political view that this is contradictory. There is certainly a popular view, popular among the BSDs and others, that those licenses are freer than the GNU ones. But there is also the farther and more radical view that even the MIT and BSD licenses are a compromise, and the goal should be questioning the validity of software copyrights the same way much of the free software community questions the validity of software patents. (In fact, among non-experts, you can find a very common view that because something is released to the public in certain ways it ought to be "public domain." The Berne rule of every creative work being automatically copyrighted isn't clearly obvious to the general public, and it's a relatively recent rule, too!) Stallman is influential, yes, and very passionate. But that's entirely different from him being all the way at the end of the range of discourse. It is worth listening to folks whose positions are less well-known but more radical.
- Shoue 5y ago
  > Or take the AGPL, for instance, sponsored by now-defunct startup Affero. There are many people (myself included) who believe the AGPL is a restriction on use, freedom 0, because it prevents you from using AGPL software in certain contexts where the requirements cannot be fulfilled. > The GPLv2 itself starts by saying, "To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions" - there is a coherent political view that this is contradictory. There will _always_ be such restrictions. For an extreme, but derived from the same philosophical core, example: the act of murder is an individual freedom, but it imposes on other peoples' freedoms. So we have to make a choice between which freedom is more important: that of the person whose life is at risk, or that of the person who wants to take lives. The formal concepts are referred to as negative liberty (freedom from murder) and positive liberty (freedom to murder someone). The modern world leans heavily towards negative liberty because we recognise that freedom isn't some absolute individualistic freedom, but rather that it is better to balance freedom in favour of most people. That's why stealing, killing, sexual assault, and many other things are freedoms we deem unethical and unnecessary. Some people say, "well, it's just software" which is dismissive of the idea that software can have very bad effects, indirect and direct, on the world, so we must empower ourselves. > Or, in the left-libertarian direction, consider the folks who want to abolish copyright entirely. There are also those on the left who want this, but also to go _beyond_ simply abolishing. If you abolish copyright without requiring code and build instructions to be open source as well, you just end up with people and companies who instead keep their code secret. It's why, when slavery was abolished, it wasn't enough. The former slaves were free, but were now in a world where the power structures were not in their favour, meaning they could still be taken advantage of and treated like slaves and were still being oppressed. Libertarian views are usually rejected by the left as right wing, instead when you talk about leftists with less authoritarian views, they call themselves anarchists (or even reject that label, and say they're "doing anarchism" rather than being "anarchists").
  - SkyBelow 5y ago
    >There will _always_ be such restrictions. For an extreme, but derived from the same philosophical core, example: the act of murder is an individual freedom, but it imposes on other peoples' freedoms. So we have to make a choice between which freedom is more important: that of the person whose life is at risk, or that of the person who wants to take lives. The formal concepts are referred to as negative liberty (freedom from murder) and positive liberty (freedom to murder someone). Your example seems messy because people seem very opposed to the notion of a freedom to cause harm as even being a freedom. So why not avoid that complication entirely? I think there is an even simpler example that'll work. If one is truly a free person, can they sell themselves into slavery. If we say yes, then allowing slavery is part of the package of ultimate freedom. If we say no, then there is at least one restriction we must include in the package of ultimate freedom. Package of ultimate freedom just being a spur of the moment name I've given to the legal system under which we are most free. Lastly, an answer of the form 'no one should exist in a position of being able to stop you from doing such', such as provided by anarchists, it just an alternate way of answering yes to the question.
thesuperbigfrog 5y ago
>>> And while I find some of his points too radical to implement practically in my own situation, I believe it's very important that we have someone like him in the tech world. As a result, whenever there is a RMS talk, I listen to it. And each time I gain new and valuable perspectives about free software that help guide future decisions. Most people would probably find his views and recommendations as too extreme to be practical, but he really does practice what he preaches in terms of only using free software for his own computing: https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
- GiorgioG 5y ago
  > I never pay for anything on the Web, because I cannot pay anonymously. Wow. My first thought upon reading that is that seems quite extreme. Having said that, it just shows you how normalized it's become to track all transactions.
  - Tostino 5y ago
    Right, the fact we transitioned into this new model, and it was really just him and a few others screaming about it is a little sad. It really doesn't seem easy to go back (to a more anonymous society) at this point either.
  - expropriator 5y ago
    I ask myself how he pays for his servers. Does it count if another person does it? Apparently, he connects to the internet over an other person. I think that's a real issue. If you have enough power that other persons do the stuff for you, it doesn't mean it's a way in which other persons can do it as well.
    - kome 5y ago
      "I never pay for anything on the Web, because I cannot pay anonymously. Anything on the net that requires payment that would identify me, I don't do. (I made an exception for the fees for the stallman.org domain, since that is connected with me anyway.)"
ineedasername 5y ago
I wouldn't describe the most extremist viewpoint on most matters as a white angel. Extremism tends to turn off some people from the cause when it looks somewhat irrational. Telling people they're bad and shouldn't play non-free videogames certainly isn't going to help things much. If you make someone who would otherwise be on your side feel guilty everytime they pick up a controller to unwind at the end of the day, that's hard to swallow.
- mcdonje 5y ago
  You can't control if people think your viewpoint is extremist or guilt-inducing. Some viewpoints can be logically categorized as being at the end of a defined spectrum. Many cannot, and there is much room for debate on whether or not they're extremist.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    >You can't control if people think your viewpoint is extremist or guilt-inducing. True. I'm not saying he can control the impact of his viewpoint, I'm making an observation on what that impact may be. >and there is much room for debate on whether or not they're extremist. Also true. I classify RMS as an extremist, but recognize that reasonable people may disagree. >Some viewpoints can be logically categorized as being at the end of a defined spectrum That is pretty much the definition of extremism, being at the final end point on either end of a spectrum. But then that's why I don't gravitate towards viewpoints that exist only as a single point on a spectrum. I prefer a multi axial approach that takes various considerations into account. Unfortunately for me that often makes it significantly harder to convey a short answer on my views, because they are fairly nuanced. As far as RMS, he may have planted a very good seed, but I don't think that OSS would have gained dominance in many areas if there had not been more moderate & practical people working in the area.
- phkahler 5y ago
  IMHO there is nothing irrational about RMS position, but it is often impractical. That means we need to push harder in his direction because it shouldn't be a practical impossibility to do what he advocates. That difficulty is exactly the problem his crusade is fighting against.
specialist 5y ago
Correct. RMS is an Ultimatist. He expanded the Overton Window (wrt FOSS). He created the necessary space for us to even have these conversations. I have no opinions on RMS the person; I've never met him. But I have great esteem for RMS the ideologue. And I too respect that he walks the talk.
SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
The stereotypical angel, though, is usually encouraging you to make the incrementally best decision in any situation. That's not really the message RMS sends. If a proprietary software developer says "hey, RMS has inspired me, I'm going to make sure users have lots of control over this new feature I'm developing", have they done a praiseworthy thing? I think so, and it sounds like you might too, but I don't get the sense that anyone in the free software movement would agree.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  Your example us two decisions, the decision to make user friendly software and the decision to give it a proprietary license. No matter how praiseworthy your efforts on the first decision are, the second one is still something he's not willing to tolerate.
sleepymoose 5y ago
As someone who has heard the name but never looked into his message until now, is Stallman always so gung-ho on "All software should be free software"? Specifically, when I hit his comments regarding video games, I was quite shocked. "Unless the game is non-free — then it's bad for you, if you play it.", if that's the case, then is any entertainment that comes at a monetary fee bad? How ahout proprietary software for niche fields? Perhaps I need to do some more research on his stance, but from this article it seems that he doesn't believe that the software industry should exist (using industry defined as "a sector of economy").
- zach_garwood 5y ago
  He's using free as in free speech, not free as in free beer.
  - meragrin_ 5y ago
    If you release a game "free" as in "free speech", how is it not "free" as in "free beer" as well? What would prevent people from redistributing it? Nothing.
    - zach_garwood 5y ago
      I guess I don't understand the question. Plenty of open-source projects charge money for a license. And even closed-source / non-free games have pirates. The availability of the soucre code does not determine a business model, the licensing does.
    - opan 5y ago
      It's not really the end of the world if only some people pay for your software. You could charge for binaries but let people build from the source. You are willingly giving people the freedom to redistribute those binaries, such as to their friends. It's just not an issue. It's not a crime that needs to be prevented.
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    This quote is almost useless unless you know its origins. I think it comes across as a bit disrespectful of the people you're aiming it at because most won't know what the hell you're getting at unless they look it up.
gjm11 5y ago
Surely the "red revil" would be these guys https://www.freebsd.org/ https://www.freebsd.org/ who, while certainly not having the exact same philosophy as RMS's, share a fair amount with it...
MisterTea 5y ago
> the complete left end of the software spectrum - the white angel on your shoulder > ...I believe it's very important that we have someone like him in the tech world. Indeed. It feels natural that these yin and yang extreme-opposite archetypes exist as they allow the rest of us to find the center, therefor balance.

synergy20 5y ago

You're so correct, can't agree more. Nobody is perfect, focus on one's strength serves everyone better.

giraffe_lady 5y ago
It's just... curious that you rarely see this kind of grace extended to other sorts of radicals and subversives. Not that it doesn't happen ever, but there seem to be certain subjects where we appreciate this role and others where we don't.

geofft 5y ago

> But you have to keep in mind that RMS advocates the free software philosophy - the complete left end of the software spectrum I don't think this is true! There are notable portions of the free software community that are farther left (or whatever direction you may consider it to be) than Stallman and GNU. Debian, for instance, rejects the GFDL as a non-free license when the "invariant sections" or "cover texts" mechanisms are used. These are clauses that allow GFDL documents to include words or even entire chapters that cannot be modified or removed from copies of the document. Stallman uses this clause to include a section about the ethics of the free software movement in documents like the GCC manual. Now, explaining the ethics of the free software movement is of course an important cause. But the manner in which this is done - preventing the GCC manual, or portions of it, from being freely modified in its entirety, from being recombined freely with other documents or code with otherwise-compatible licenses - is, in the view of Debian and others, incompatible with the free software philosophy. This is a farther / more radical view. Stallman's view is that making some unmodifiable and unremovable sections in an otherwise-free work is an acceptable compromise. Debian's view is that there is no room for compromise. And Debian is an entire (and quite influential) Linux distribution. Or take the AGPL, for instance, sponsored by now-defunct startup Affero. There are many people (myself included) who believe the AGPL is a restriction on use, freedom 0, because it prevents you from using AGPL software in certain contexts where the requirements cannot be fulfilled. Suppose I find some AGPL code with a neat algorithm for a session cache, or something, and I want to incorporate that into a TLS library. There is absolutely no way to fulfill the AGPL's requirement to make source code available to users who interact with my code over the network. The clause triggers, because users are indeed interacting over the network, but since there's no TLS extension to offer source, I can't actually do so. This is, it seems to me, as much of a restriction on use as "You can't use this in commercial settings" or "You can't use this for military applications." There's a reason that even GNU still uses the GPL for much of its software - they know the AGPL would make lots of their code effectively unusable in contexts where it ought to be usable. Or, in the left-libertarian direction, consider the folks who want to abolish copyright entirely. The GPL fundamentally relies on copyright law, else it cannot have its particular effect over the MIT/BSD/etc. licenses where it requires redistributing source along with binaries. The GPLv2 itself starts by saying, "To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions" - there is a coherent political view that this is contradictory. There is certainly a popular view, popular among the BSDs and others, that those licenses are freer than the GNU ones. But there is also the farther and more radical view that even the MIT and BSD licenses are a compromise, and the goal should be questioning the validity of software copyrights the same way much of the free software community questions the validity of software patents. (In fact, among non-experts, you can find a very common view that because something is released to the public in certain ways it ought to be "public domain." The Berne rule of every creative work being automatically copyrighted isn't clearly obvious to the general public, and it's a relatively recent rule, too!) Stallman is influential, yes, and very passionate. But that's entirely different from him being all the way at the end of the range of discourse. It is worth listening to folks whose positions are less well-known but more radical.

Shoue 5y ago
> Or take the AGPL, for instance, sponsored by now-defunct startup Affero. There are many people (myself included) who believe the AGPL is a restriction on use, freedom 0, because it prevents you from using AGPL software in certain contexts where the requirements cannot be fulfilled. > The GPLv2 itself starts by saying, "To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions" - there is a coherent political view that this is contradictory. There will _always_ be such restrictions. For an extreme, but derived from the same philosophical core, example: the act of murder is an individual freedom, but it imposes on other peoples' freedoms. So we have to make a choice between which freedom is more important: that of the person whose life is at risk, or that of the person who wants to take lives. The formal concepts are referred to as negative liberty (freedom from murder) and positive liberty (freedom to murder someone). The modern world leans heavily towards negative liberty because we recognise that freedom isn't some absolute individualistic freedom, but rather that it is better to balance freedom in favour of most people. That's why stealing, killing, sexual assault, and many other things are freedoms we deem unethical and unnecessary. Some people say, "well, it's just software" which is dismissive of the idea that software can have very bad effects, indirect and direct, on the world, so we must empower ourselves. > Or, in the left-libertarian direction, consider the folks who want to abolish copyright entirely. There are also those on the left who want this, but also to go _beyond_ simply abolishing. If you abolish copyright without requiring code and build instructions to be open source as well, you just end up with people and companies who instead keep their code secret. It's why, when slavery was abolished, it wasn't enough. The former slaves were free, but were now in a world where the power structures were not in their favour, meaning they could still be taken advantage of and treated like slaves and were still being oppressed. Libertarian views are usually rejected by the left as right wing, instead when you talk about leftists with less authoritarian views, they call themselves anarchists (or even reject that label, and say they're "doing anarchism" rather than being "anarchists").
- SkyBelow 5y ago
  >There will _always_ be such restrictions. For an extreme, but derived from the same philosophical core, example: the act of murder is an individual freedom, but it imposes on other peoples' freedoms. So we have to make a choice between which freedom is more important: that of the person whose life is at risk, or that of the person who wants to take lives. The formal concepts are referred to as negative liberty (freedom from murder) and positive liberty (freedom to murder someone). Your example seems messy because people seem very opposed to the notion of a freedom to cause harm as even being a freedom. So why not avoid that complication entirely? I think there is an even simpler example that'll work. If one is truly a free person, can they sell themselves into slavery. If we say yes, then allowing slavery is part of the package of ultimate freedom. If we say no, then there is at least one restriction we must include in the package of ultimate freedom. Package of ultimate freedom just being a spur of the moment name I've given to the legal system under which we are most free. Lastly, an answer of the form 'no one should exist in a position of being able to stop you from doing such', such as provided by anarchists, it just an alternate way of answering yes to the question.

thesuperbigfrog 5y ago

>>> And while I find some of his points too radical to implement practically in my own situation, I believe it's very important that we have someone like him in the tech world. As a result, whenever there is a RMS talk, I listen to it. And each time I gain new and valuable perspectives about free software that help guide future decisions. Most people would probably find his views and recommendations as too extreme to be practical, but he really does practice what he preaches in terms of only using free software for his own computing: https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

GiorgioG 5y ago
> I never pay for anything on the Web, because I cannot pay anonymously. Wow. My first thought upon reading that is that seems quite extreme. Having said that, it just shows you how normalized it's become to track all transactions.
- Tostino 5y ago
  Right, the fact we transitioned into this new model, and it was really just him and a few others screaming about it is a little sad. It really doesn't seem easy to go back (to a more anonymous society) at this point either.
- expropriator 5y ago
  I ask myself how he pays for his servers. Does it count if another person does it? Apparently, he connects to the internet over an other person. I think that's a real issue. If you have enough power that other persons do the stuff for you, it doesn't mean it's a way in which other persons can do it as well.
  - kome 5y ago
    "I never pay for anything on the Web, because I cannot pay anonymously. Anything on the net that requires payment that would identify me, I don't do. (I made an exception for the fees for the stallman.org domain, since that is connected with me anyway.)"

ineedasername 5y ago

I wouldn't describe the most extremist viewpoint on most matters as a white angel. Extremism tends to turn off some people from the cause when it looks somewhat irrational. Telling people they're bad and shouldn't play non-free videogames certainly isn't going to help things much. If you make someone who would otherwise be on your side feel guilty everytime they pick up a controller to unwind at the end of the day, that's hard to swallow.

mcdonje 5y ago
You can't control if people think your viewpoint is extremist or guilt-inducing. Some viewpoints can be logically categorized as being at the end of a defined spectrum. Many cannot, and there is much room for debate on whether or not they're extremist.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  >You can't control if people think your viewpoint is extremist or guilt-inducing. True. I'm not saying he can control the impact of his viewpoint, I'm making an observation on what that impact may be. >and there is much room for debate on whether or not they're extremist. Also true. I classify RMS as an extremist, but recognize that reasonable people may disagree. >Some viewpoints can be logically categorized as being at the end of a defined spectrum That is pretty much the definition of extremism, being at the final end point on either end of a spectrum. But then that's why I don't gravitate towards viewpoints that exist only as a single point on a spectrum. I prefer a multi axial approach that takes various considerations into account. Unfortunately for me that often makes it significantly harder to convey a short answer on my views, because they are fairly nuanced. As far as RMS, he may have planted a very good seed, but I don't think that OSS would have gained dominance in many areas if there had not been more moderate & practical people working in the area.
phkahler 5y ago
IMHO there is nothing irrational about RMS position, but it is often impractical. That means we need to push harder in his direction because it shouldn't be a practical impossibility to do what he advocates. That difficulty is exactly the problem his crusade is fighting against.

specialist 5y ago

Correct. RMS is an Ultimatist. He expanded the Overton Window (wrt FOSS). He created the necessary space for us to even have these conversations. I have no opinions on RMS the person; I've never met him. But I have great esteem for RMS the ideologue. And I too respect that he walks the talk.

SpicyLemonZest 5y ago

The stereotypical angel, though, is usually encouraging you to make the incrementally best decision in any situation. That's not really the message RMS sends. If a proprietary software developer says "hey, RMS has inspired me, I'm going to make sure users have lots of control over this new feature I'm developing", have they done a praiseworthy thing? I think so, and it sounds like you might too, but I don't get the sense that anyone in the free software movement would agree.

boomboomsubban 5y ago
Your example us two decisions, the decision to make user friendly software and the decision to give it a proprietary license. No matter how praiseworthy your efforts on the first decision are, the second one is still something he's not willing to tolerate.

sleepymoose 5y ago

As someone who has heard the name but never looked into his message until now, is Stallman always so gung-ho on "All software should be free software"? Specifically, when I hit his comments regarding video games, I was quite shocked. "Unless the game is non-free — then it's bad for you, if you play it.", if that's the case, then is any entertainment that comes at a monetary fee bad? How ahout proprietary software for niche fields? Perhaps I need to do some more research on his stance, but from this article it seems that he doesn't believe that the software industry should exist (using industry defined as "a sector of economy").

zach_garwood 5y ago
He's using free as in free speech, not free as in free beer.
- meragrin_ 5y ago
  If you release a game "free" as in "free speech", how is it not "free" as in "free beer" as well? What would prevent people from redistributing it? Nothing.
  - zach_garwood 5y ago
    I guess I don't understand the question. Plenty of open-source projects charge money for a license. And even closed-source / non-free games have pirates. The availability of the soucre code does not determine a business model, the licensing does.
  - opan 5y ago
    It's not really the end of the world if only some people pay for your software. You could charge for binaries but let people build from the source. You are willingly giving people the freedom to redistribute those binaries, such as to their friends. It's just not an issue. It's not a crime that needs to be prevented.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  This quote is almost useless unless you know its origins. I think it comes across as a bit disrespectful of the people you're aiming it at because most won't know what the hell you're getting at unless they look it up.

gjm11 5y ago

Surely the "red revil" would be these guys https://www.freebsd.org/ https://www.freebsd.org/ who, while certainly not having the exact same philosophy as RMS's, share a fair amount with it...

MisterTea 5y ago

> the complete left end of the software spectrum - the white angel on your shoulder > ...I believe it's very important that we have someone like him in the tech world. Indeed. It feels natural that these yin and yang extreme-opposite archetypes exist as they allow the rest of us to find the center, therefor balance.